Additional information
by Anna Rosner (Author)
Can best friends Aviva and Maddy survive the hardest year of their lives without each other?
Twelve-year-olds Maddy Li-Quinn and Aviva Adelman were born on the same street and have been inseparable ever since. The two are innately connected through their love of the arts: Aviva is passionate about poetry and writing, and Maddy is a gifted violinist. However, over the course of a painful year, very different family struggles drive the two girls apart. Maddy encounters violence in the home, and Aviva's baby brother faces a difficult diagnosis.
To cope with the stress, Aviva's mother suggests she write a book about her friendship with Maddy. In an attempt to heal through the written word, Aviva becomes the funny, feisty protagonist of her own book. Reflecting back on the past year, Aviva realizes that she, too, has made many mistakes along the way.
Last Year With Maddy draws on the author's personal experience with loss and recovery.
Read the first two chapters!
"[B]ittersweet ... In the tender novel Last Year with Maddy, best friends grow apart and find their way home again." -- Foreword Reviews
Author Biography
Anna Rosner is the award-winning author of two hockey biographies for young readers published by Yellow Dog, as well as short fiction, scholarly articles and essays. She holds a PhD in French Literature from the University of Toronto. Anna's historical novel, Eyes on the Ice (Groundwood Books), is a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection and is short-listed for four awards, including the 2025 Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction. Anna's fourth book, Last Year with Maddy, will be published in April 2026.
Anna is the director of the Indigenous literary project Books with Wings, which provides personal letters and new books for children living on isolated reserves.
