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Resources

There are tons of resources online. This page will not cover everything but we hope to compile a great collection of resources to help librarians get started. 

Definitions and categories are never set in stone and they're not perfect. Far from it. Before we go too deep we would like to clarify two terms. 

Comics: It's not a perfect term but it's the most widely used term around the world to refer to this story telling medium. In general, we use the term comics to refer to the medium as a whole. It includes serialised comics collected into trade paperbacks, original graphic novels, manga, bande dessinée, fumetto, tebeos, etc.

Graphic novels: This is a term that is widely used in libraries to refer to all comics. Ironically, manga series and collected editions of serialised comics are not graphic novels but it has become the standard so we're stuck with it. We use it in general to refer to the graphic novels section at libraries but, confusingly, sometimes to refer to original graphic novels - that is a comic that has been created as a stand alone, complete story.

Having clarified those two main terms, we recommend school librarian Sarah Smith's post on Terms and Definitions if you're interested in this and want to read more. Again, no definition is perfect but her page is a great starting point.

We've divided this resources page into the following categories:

  • Activities and Study Guides
  • Awards and Recognition
  • Comics Librarianship
  • Teaching With Comics
  • Webinars
  • Why Comics?
  • Other Organisations

Activities and Study Guides
Children love comics so why not engage them with some activities? Follow the link to our Activities and Study Guides page for lots of free activities and study guides published by different authors and publishers.

Awards and Recognition
It's important to keep track of different awards and recognition of graphic novels. Most collection development policies cite in their acquisition criteria that the title should be highly reviewed and/or have received an award/recognition. 

There are many awards around the world and different organisation that offer recognition, including ourselves with our yearly Notable Australian Graphic Novels list.

The list below includes the awards and recognition dedicated to graphic novels that we believe are most relevant for Australian libraries.

Comics Librarianship
Comics librarianship is here to stay and there's real momentum right now. Lots of organisations and librarians are doing outstanding work with comics. Here are some of our favourites:
  • Comics and Graphic Novels Round Table: The North American equivalent to our group. Our friends across the ocean. They organise webinars, publish articles, have published a comprehensive guide for cataloguing comics, and also publish a Great Graphic Novels for Children and Great Graphic Novels for Adults list. 
  • The Graphic Library: A marvellous blog by school librarian Sarah Smith with lots of great resources and reviews.
  • Manga in Libraries: An ongoing webinar series all about manga created by Jillian Rudes with a great number of guests and discussions on lots of different topics.
  • Manga Librarian: Ashley Hawkins is a school librarian and her blog is dedicated to manga with lots of really handy reviews and resources.
  • No Flying No Tights: A comprehensive website by librarians and for librarians fully dedicated to comics and manga. It's constantly updated with reviews and has great core lists for starting a graphic novel collection.
  • School Library Journal: SLJ has a section dedicated to comics for kids.
  • YALSA: The Young Adult Library Services Association publishes a yearly list of Great Graphic Novels for Teens. You can access the current list as well as past lists on their page.
The following books are also recommended:
  • The Library's Guide to Graphic Novels by various authors, edited by John Ballestro (American Libraries Association)
  • Manga in Libraries: A Guide for Teen Librarians by Jillian Rudes (ALA Editions) [coming out April 2023]
  • Comic Book Collections and Programming by Matthew Z. Wood (Rowman & Littlefield)
  • Graphic Novels for Adults by David S. Serchay (Neal-Schuman Publishers)
  • Graphic Novels for Children and Tweens by David S. Serchay (Neal-Schuman Publishers)
And the following two articles from Kelsey Bogan, publishing on the Don't Shush Me! blog, are really comprehensive and an excellent guide/resource for collection development: 

Teaching with comics
We know children and young adults love comics and manga. We know this because sales are booming. We also know that comics model concise and rich language, are multimodal texts and studies suggest that memory retention is stronger when the content has been presented as a comic. So how can we use them in the classroom?

Comics provide opportunities to work on multiple skills and learning subjects all together. For example, mixing humanities, art, English and media studies all in one project.

Humanities and science teachers can choose to study a comic as a whole, or some pages from a comic. Since comics are multimodal texts, the reader must use multiple literacies to decode the text. This makes comics an excellent medium to study in English and Media Studies classrooms. They're also also a great way to engage children in the creative process. Students could create a comic while incorporating lessons from English and art.

Teachers and librarians are really well placed to work together and link titles in the school library to curriculum standards.

Buying classroom sets of graphic novels should be considered. However, if buying classrooms sets is beyond the budget for schools we have compiled a list of free webcomics available online. Please see the tab on our blog dedicated to Australian webcomics.

For teachers wanting to use comics in the classroom we recommend the following two books:
  • Teaching With Comics by Tim Smyth (Routledge)
  • Hacking Graphic Novels: 8 Ways to teach higher level thinking with comics and visual story telling by Shveta V. Miller (X10 Publications)
Tim Smyth also has a comprehensive website with lots of resources for teaching with comics here.



Webinars
There are lots of webinars these days and we have compiled some of our favourites here. 
Why Comics?
At a library level, investing in a strong graphic collection at your library makes perfect sense. In fact, reading comics, apart from being the most exciting story telling medium(we're not biased at all), has a lot of benefits. 

The main arguments when advocating for comics at libraries could be summarised as this:
  • a highly popular medium with sales booming
  • a distinct story telling medium and we must cater to all readers in the community
  • a rich story telling medium that encompasses multiple literacies; in fact, comics have multiple literacy super powers!
  • high loans and excellent return on investment
For a brief overview, we recommend reading 21st Century Literacy With Graphic Novels by Iurgi Urrutia and Graphic Novels: Providing a Different Perspective by Karen Gray both published on the Schools Catalogue Information Service journal.
  
If the bullet points and article above are not enough and you would like to read more please visit our Comics and Literacy page where we delve further into different studies and articles that demonstrate the great benefits of comics for readers.

Other Resources
There are also other organisations and resources worth mentioning. These are organisations, websites and podcasts that we frequently use and engage with.