Webinar: Nurturing and inspiring reading and creativity using graphic novels and manga now online

Wednesday, last week, we gathered for our second ALIA Graphic webinar and we want to thank our awesome four speakers and everyone else that was able to meet us live.

We are excited we had four amazing speakers to talk about all things comics and manga. In this webinar we focused on Junior and YA comics as well as manga and explored how they inspire reading and creativity. The four awesome speakers were:

Gabby Cundy, librarian specialising in Children's and Youth literature and comics. Elizabeth Marruffo and Campbell Whyte, comic book creators, artists and directors of Milktooth Arts Space, where they nurture and inspire kids to make art, including comics. Jillian Rudes, librarian and creator of the wildly successful and amazing Manga in Libraries webinar series which, you can find, together with many other resources, on her website here. The Manga in Libraries book is coming out early 2023. 

If you could not attend the event live, and in the spirit of the group of always making our resources freely available to everyone, we are now publishing the webinar in full. You can watch the YouTube video below, or if you prefer to just listen we have also published an audio only version on our podcast feed. 

Let us know what you think of the webinar and we would love to hear any ideas you may have for a webinar next year.

Talking Manga with Ashley Hawkins

ALIA Graphic's Tara talks to our second international guest, Ashley Hawkins otherwise known as @MangaLibrarian on Twitter. They discuss different types of Manga, the different ratings, collection development and shelving.

Ashley also suggests lots of great titles for different age brackets. 

You can follow Ashley on her blog: https://mangalibrarian.com and Twitter.

If you like what we're doing, hit the subscribe button on our YouTube channel to stay up to date with our chats. You can also follow us on Twitter and don't forget to check our blog for updates, monthly roundups of news and new release titles. You can also subscribe to our blog and receive an email every time we post (a couple of times a month).

Remember that all our video chats are also released as podcasts. We also publish more content as podcast only so please subscribe to the ALIA Graphic Podcast.

These are the titles recommended in the video by Ashley.

Jnr readers ( 5-10)

Chi’s Sweet Home

Yokai Watch

Middle grade 10-12 yrs

Must have shonen: My Hero Academia (early volumes)

Must have shojo: Kitchen Princess, Flying Witch

New titles to look out for:

Yotsuba&! Is coming back

Penguin & House by Akiho Ieda

Teens 13 - 16

Must have shonen: Case Study of Vanitas

Must have shojo: Horimiya, The White Cat's Revenge as Plotted from the Dragon King's Lap

New titles to look out for: 

Play It Cool, Guys, Blue Period, Hello, I am a Witch and my Crush Wants me to Make a Love Potion! 

Older teens

Must have shonen: Chainsaw Man

Must have shojo: A Sign of Affection

New titles to look out for: 

My Dad is the Queen of All VTubers?!, Chasing After Aoi Koshiba, I Was Reincarnated as the Villainess in an Otome Game but the Boys Love Me Anyway!

Mature/Adult

Life Lessons with Uramichi Oniisan, Eniale & Dewiela, Our Fake Marriage, Perfect World, Way of the Househusband, Escape Journey

New titles: 

They Were Eleven (2022), Lil Leo

Light novel suggestions for purchase

Marielle Clarac

Full Metal Panic

I'm in Love with the Villainess

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!!

Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki

I Have a Secret (by author of I Want to Eat Your Pancreas)