November Roundup

Who’d have thought that November would be such a great month for Australian graphic novel creators? This month, we have some exciting news and resources to share which show a real recognition of the value, creativity and innovation of graphic novels and comics in Australia.

We are beyond thrilled that Sarah W. Searle has won the 2023 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Young Adult Literature for her insightful graphic novel ‘The Greatest Thing’. Go and reserve it now from your local library if you haven’t already! In addition to this, we share Allen & Unwin’s teachers’ notes for Trace Balla’s stunning ‘Leaflight’ graphic novel, and celebrate a new release this month by Australian creator Stephen Kok in ‘Transhuman: Volume 2.’

Last but not least, we are so excited at the launch of Reimena Yee’s ‘The Creator's Guide to Comics Devices’, which encompasses ‘sequential art, graphic narrative, graphic literary, visual-literary and all other euphemisms for comics’. Not only is it an incredibly perceptive and well-researched resource, but the guide is a living document that is also open to contributors, so feel free to get in touch and contribute more information on graphic storytelling!

In case you missed it

This month we presented our annual ALIA Graphic webinar, titled Let's Get Practical! We’re incredibly excited to share the webinar with you and we will be working on a few themed book lists as a result of discussions we had on graphic novels that represent disability, comics appropriate for all ages, and more. Keep an eye out on the blog in the new year for some of our recommended resources that may be helpful for your library collection. You can find 79 ALIA Graphic Webinar: Let's Get Practical at the link, below, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

 

News

• Reimena Yee has launched her Creator’s Guide to Comics Devices and it’s a stunning free resource for comics creators, educators and anyone interested in understanding storytelling devices that are unique to comics and how they work. What an incredible resource!
• The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards were announced and we’re so happy to see Sarah W. Searle’s The Greatest Thing won the Young Adult award for her beautiful graphic novel. Congratulations Sarah! All the winners can be found here.
• The Beat has published an extensive and interesting interview with Rachel Smythe about Lore Olympus and new projects on the horizon. You can read the full interview here.
• Excellent news from the U.S., A First Time for Everything by Dan Santat becomes the second graphic novel ever to win the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. Huda F Cares? was also a finalist and Parachute Kids was in the long list. You can find all the winners and nominees here.
• The Angouleme Comics Festival has announced their official selection for 2024. The Angouleme festival is the most prestigious comics festival in Europe and it’s interesting to see what titles have made their list of nominees. The Beat has all the info about the nominated titles that are published and available in English.
• DC announces a new line of compact comics aimed at reaching new readers in the book market. The comics will be smaller than traditional comics and similar to the size of novels and manga volumes. Popverse has the lowdown here. The compact comics line will launch in June 2024.
• Marjane Satrapi, the celebrated author of Persepolis, says she’s done with comics and whilst she hasn’t created a new graphic novel, she’s the editor of an upcoming anthology: Woman, Life, Freedom, out in March 2024. Publishers Weekly has all we know for now.
• Webtoons and webcomics are being published in print in increasing numbers. Publishers Weekly has a great article looking at this and discussing what the trends are. You can find Webtoons and Webcomics Keep Scrolling into Print here.

 

Teaching resource

• Allen & Unwin has published a document with teachers’ notes for Trace Balla’s wonderful Leaflight graphic novel. This is an excellent resource for primary schools. You can find the teachers’ notes here.

 

Collections

• Publishers Weekly has published their lists of favourite books of the year in different categories. In the Top 10 books of the year, they’ve included The Talk by Darrin Bell. And they’ve highlighted four other graphic novels in their best comics of the year category, which you can find here.
• No Flying No Tights has published another of their great Staff Picks list, this time on comics about body image and accepting your body. You can find the list here.

 

Webinars/Podcasts

• Booklist has released the archive of their webinar Graphic Novels for All (filmed Oct 31, 2023)
• Catch up on Comic Plus’ Independent Comics for Every Reader! | LibraryCon Live 2023 for graphic novel titles from library-friendly publishers.

 

New Releases

Junior

• Barb and the Shadow Army by Dan Abdo (Simon & Schuster)
• Bocchi the Rock! Volume 1 by Aki Hamazi (Yes Press)
• Buzzing by Samuel Sattin & Rye Hickman (Hachette Children’s Books)
• Cat Kid Comic Club: Influencers by Dav Pilkey (Scholastic)
• Cats Claws: Cat Ninja by Matthew Cody (Andrews McMeel Publishing)
• Curlfriends: New in Town by Sharee Miller (Hachette Children’s Books)
• Death & Sparkles and the Sacred Golden Cupcake by Rob Justus (Chronicle Books)
• Go-Go Guys by Rowboat Watkins (Chronicle Books)
• The Haunting of Loch Ness Castle by Chelsea Campbell  (Scholastic)
• The History Club: Duel Across Time by Bret Baier, Marvin Sianipar (Aladdin Books)
• Ink Girls by Marieke Nijkamp & Sylvia Bi (Greenwillow)
• Keeper of the Lost Cities Volume 1 by Shannon Messenger, Celina Frenn & Gabriella Chianello (Simon & Schuster UK)
• Minecraft Omnibus Volume 1 by Sfe R. Monster, Sarah Graley, John J. Hill (Dark Horse)
• The Nightcrawlers Volume 1 by Marco Lopez (Ablaze, LLC)
• Punycorn by Andi Watson (HarperCollins Publishers)
• Rose Wolves Book 1 by Natalie Warner (Top Shelf)
• Sherbert and the Partly Digested Amulet of Power by F. Artington (Whitefox Publishing)
• Spell of a Time: Witches of Brooklyn by Sophie Escabasse (Random House US)
• Stories of the Islands by Clar Angkasa (Holiday House)
• Super Boba Cafe by Nidhi Chanani (Amulet Books)
• Turtle Bread by Kim Joy, Alti Firmansyah, Joamette Gil (Dark Horse)

 

YA

• The Boy From Clearwater Book 1 by Yu Pei-yun, Zhou Jian-xin (Levine Querido)
• Ennead by Mojito (Seven Seas) [Please note there is also a hardcover adult edition of this series]
• I am Hexed by Kirsten Thompson (Rocketship Entertainment)
• The Pirate and the Porcelain Girl by Emily Riesbeck (Simon & Schuster)
• Sophie’s World Volume II: From Descartes to the Present Day by Jostein Gaardner, Vincent Zabus, Nicoby (SelfMadeHero)
• Spider Gwen Ghost-Spider by Seanan McGuire (Random House US)
• Static: Up All Night by Lamar Giles (Random House US)
• Transhuman - Volume 2: Adalyn by Stephen Kok (TL Creative) [Australian Creator]

 

Adult

• Arrowsmith Vol 1: So Smart in Their Fine Uniforms by Kurt Busiek, Carlos Pachecho (Image Comics)
• Good Girls Go To Hell by Tohar Sherman-Friedman (Graphic Mundi)
• Hot to Trop by Veronica Post (Conundrum Press)
• I Don’t Want to Be a Mom by Irene Olmo (Graphic Mundi)
• Macanudo: Optimism Is For the Brave by Liniers (Fantagraphics)
• Majnun and Layla: Songs From Beyond the Grave by Yann Damezin (Humanoids / Life Drawn)
• One More Step, Come Stand By My Side by Takeda Toryumon (Yen Press)
• Saga Vol 11 by Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
• The Solitary Gourmet by Jiro Taniguchi, Masayuki Kusumi (Ponent Mon)
• Transitions: A Mother’s Journey by Elodie Durand (Top Shelf)

 

ALIA Graphic Webinar: Let's Get Practical

 Last week we had our annual ALIA Graphic webinar. This time, we chose to have the committee answering your questions. The main points of discussion were manga and how to deal with challenges to comics, graphic novels and manga. But we discussed a lot more! 

If you missed the webinar, we have made a recording available. You've got two options: YouTube or audio podcast.

The podcast episode can be found here: 79 ALIA Graphic Webinar: Let's Get Practical (or wherever you listen to podcasts)

You can watch the webinar below. 

Some of the resources and websites mentioned during the webinar:

On narratology and the study of comics:

• Reimena Yee's fantastic and totally free resource about comics and their story telling devices. Perfect for teachers, comics creators and anyone interested in learning about comics narratology and storytelling: https://comicsdevices.com

Comic book challenges:

• To check the latest classification decision by the Australian Classification Board: https://www.classification.gov.au/classification-ratings/latest-classification-decisions
• See https://www.alia.org.au/Web/Groups-and-Committees/SIG/ALIA_Schools for link to ALIA Schools special interest group and links to school libraries policies and procedures.

Manga and junior manga:

• Manga in Libraries is an excellent book we highly recommend. The website also has a lot of great resources, lists of recommended manga (including junior manga) and a whole range of webinars related to manga: https://mangainlibraries.com/book-lists/
• Two other resources with recommended manga, including junior manga: https://www.slj.com/story/manga-an-all-ages-starter-list-mondo-manga 
• https://www.anime-planet.com/users/themangalibrarian/lists/all-ages-manga-918063

Australian comics and graphic novels:

• For Australian titles of recent years we recommend the ALIA Graphic Notables lists: https://aliagraphic.blogspot.com/p/notable-australian-graphic-novels.html

Keeping up with new releases:

• ALIA Graphic publishes a monthly roundup of news and new titles that we believe are a good fit for libraries. If you want to go deeper, more resources below.
• Kinokuniya often have new release lists for Graphic Novels and Comics, as well as more general book lists https://kinokuniya.com.au/
• This can be helpful https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/
• https://noflyingnotights.com (this website is by librarians and for librarians, regularly reviewing graphic novels for libraries and also contains core collections lists)

ALIA Graphic: Let’s Get Practical: Answering all Your Questions Webinar 2023

 

The ALIA Graphic team is pleased to announce this year's webinar. We get many questions emailed to us by librarians and library staff across the country about the different factions of the graphic novel and comic world. So we thought that this year we would spend the time hearing from you and providing answers to those questions that you may have been wanting to ask for a while. 

As a team we want to bring awareness and positivity to graphic novels and comics being an integral part of all library collections. We understand that people still have some hesitation, are unsure about the format or knowing how best to have them within your collections. Across our team we have a wide range of interests within the genre from junior, adult, manga or webcomic. Be assured that whatever question you have we will do our best to answer it.

When: Thursday November 16

Time: 2pm AEDT

Duration: 1 hour

Registration via Zoom

To submit a question for the team to answer please follow this link and your questions will remain anonymous: Let’s Get Practical: Answering all Your Questions Google Form 

Even if you can not make it on the day please send us through your questions. As the webinar will be recorded you will be able to hear our reactions and answers when the session becomes available.

If you have any general questions about the webinar please email: aliagraphicinfo@gmail.com

ALIA CPD Hours

If you are a member of the ALIA PD Scheme or Proficiency Recognition Program (PRP) you can log and reflect on your time spent engaging with ALIA Virtual Showcases for PD hours. There is no cap on the number of hours you can claim - the total is simply the number of hours that you can spend actively learning and engaging in the conference content. This will vary from person to person. Any PD questions can be sent to pd@alia.org.au.

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.

Webinar Announcement: Nurturing and Inspiring Reading and Creativity With Comics and Manga

A year ago we had our first ALIA Graphic webinar (which is still available to watch our YouTube page) and we thought we'd gather together again this year.

We are excited to have four amazing speakers to talk about all things comics and manga. In this webinar we will focus on Junior and YA comics and manga. We will explore how they nurture life long readers and inspire creativity. As usual, our webinar will be on Zoom and it will be free.

Hosted by ALIA Graphic Convenor Iurgi Urrutia, we’re pleased to announce four incredibly exciting speakers.

Gabby Cundy has been an ALIA Graphic team member since its inception. She’s situated in Western Sydney where she currently works as a Branch Librarian. Previously she has worked in a school library where she first developed a love of Children’s and YA literature. Recently she presented at the Illawarra School Library Association conference about embracing comics and graphic novels in school libraries. Earlier this year she  completed her Masters of Information Studies specialising in Children’s Literature. She can always be found with a book close by with the majority of those being new release YA novels and Middle Grade graphic novels. Helping children and teenagers find a book that they fall in love with is what she wants to do for the rest of her career.

Follow Gabby on Twitter: @GabzzC

Elizabeth Marruffo and Campbell Whyte are the creative minds behind Milktooth Arts Space, a school of art and comics, based in Perth. They believe that all children are naturally creative and they see it as their job to nurture and inspire that creativity through painting, sculpting, textiles, comics and illustration. They run long term courses and school holiday workshops. They are also artists and comic book creators in their own right. Elizabeth has been a sessional lecturer in painting at Edith Cowan University, a finalist in numerous national painting awards including The Portia Geach Memorial Prize and is working on her first graphic novel, Pup Pup Is the Boss of the Stars, a story inspired by the small towns of Agua Prieta and Magdalena in Mexico, where she grew up. Campbell Whyte has published several short comics and two volumes of Home Time published by Top Shelf, which received lots of recognition and awards, including being nominated at the Eisner Awards 2018 in the Best Publication for Kids Ages 9-12 category. They both also co-founded the Perth Comic Arts Festival - a volunteer run and 100% free to attend celebration of local comics talent. Check out Milktooth’s website here: https://milk-tooth.com 

Jillian Rudes is the school librarian at a 6th-12th grade, public school in New York City. She is the Japanese Culture & Manga Librarian for the New York City Department of Education, as well as, the founder and director of Manga in Libraries. She received the American Association of School Librarians’ Collaborative School Library Award in 2020 and the American Library Association's Scholastic Library Publishing Award in 2022. She was also deemed the “Manga Maven” by Library Journal and selected as Mover & Shaker in 2022. She has presented on manga at New York Comic Con, San Diego Comic Con, the American Library Association’s Annual Conference, the International Association of School Librarianship’s Annual Conference, and more. You can find a ton of resources on her website MangaInLibraries.com. Follow Jillian on Twitter: @JRlibrarian

Are you ready to sign up? Registration is totally free. Please note, the event will be recorded for those who cannot attend live. The recording will be made available after the event(give us a few days).

When: Wednesday November 30 at 12pm AEDT

Zoom registration: Webinar registration here

Duration: 1 hour

Please direct any questions about the webinar to our email address: aliagraphicinfo@gmail.com

ALIA CPD Hours

If you are a member of the ALIA PD Scheme or Proficiency Recognition Program (PRP) you can log and reflect on your time spent engaging with ALIA Virtual Showcases for PD hours. There is no cap on the number of hours you can claim - the total is simply the number of hours that you can spend actively learning and engaging in the conference content. This will vary from person to person. Any PD questions can be sent to pd@alia.org.au

Webinar + Graphic Novel Club + Podcast updates

While we rarely do this, we thought we'd give everyone some quick updates because there are a few things happening. 

WEBINAR

A year ago we got together for our very first webinar, Getting Graphic: Comics Around the World, which you can still watch on our YouTube page here. So we thought we'd get together again and have a second ALIA Graphic webinar. 

We will announce all the details soon but make sure you reserve the day. It will be Wednesday November 30 at 12pm AEDT and we're incredibly excited about the event and the speakers who will be joining the conversation. This is one you definitely don't want to miss.

GRAPHIC NOVEL CLUB

Our Graphic Novel Club returns this Sunday at 3pm AEDT and we will be discussing horror in comics. As usual, there are three suggested readings but even if you haven't read those three you can definitely join the conversation and discuss your favourite horror comics. 

Join the fun and feel free to wear something spooky!

If you've never registered for our Graphic Novel Club, check out all the details here and find the Zoom registration link here.

PODCASTS

We have published two podcast episodes recently. First we had a chat with comic book creator Gary Proudley who has published several comics, most importantly Talgard: Tome 2 this year (Gestalt Comics). The Talgard series is interesting as it depicts a barbarian who uses intelligence rather than brute force. Every Talgard story is four pages long and with art by a different Australian artist. 

The other podcast is an in depth chat with Paul Metcalfe who is the library coordinator for the Albany Campus Library of South Regional TAFE WA. He published an article on Incite recently and with him about building a graphic novel collection at TAFE. The episode notes also include some interesting resources.

We have also created an ALIA Graphic Podcast blog where all our podcast episodes can be enjoyed and have added a Podcast tab on this blog to make it easier to find and navigate. 

Of course, you can still continue to listen to our podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

That's all for now. Light up your whole brain, read comics!

Getting Graphic Comics Around the World Webinar

We want to thank our speakers at yesterday's webinar. It was our first live webinar and it went really well. Thank you, also, to all the participants for all their comments and all the sharing in the chat. 

We look forward to more webinars next year and if you have any topics or ideas for webinars and things that should be covered, let us know through Facebook, Twitter, or email.

Here's the promised recording of the webinar, which can be found on our YouTube channel if you'd like to subscribe to it. If you prefer an audio only podcast version of the recording you can access it here.

To download a couple of documents with links for resources/websites that were shared by our speakers and participants follow this link to our Google Drive. You can also find out more about Graphic Medicine here.

ALIA Graphic presents: Getting Graphic: Comics Around the World

We thought we'd try something new before the end of the year and we're very proud to announce our very first live webinar. Every library needs a graphic novels champion. In this webinar we'll look at comics around the world. We'll learn about the history of Australian comics. We'll hear from the president of the American Library association's Graphic Novels and Comics Roundtable. We'll be introduced to what graphic medicine and why it's growing so rapidly and we'll also even discuss the contentious issue of cataloguing and shelving comics. 

Our first live ALIA Graphic webinar will be the perfect introduction for librarians and educators wanting to know more about comics and graphic novels around the world and in Australia. Hosted by ALIA Graphic Convenor and Iurgi Urrutia (Kingston Libraries, Victoria) who will be giving an overview of comics around the world, we’re pleased to announce three exciting speakers:

Daniel Best is an Australian comics historian and author with a vast knowledge of Australian comics history. Australia has had, and still has nowadays, a great range of comic creators that have usually gone under the radar. Daniel will give us an overview of the history of Australian comics.

Tara Eagleton is the Library Services Collections Officer at Wollondilly Library, NSW. Tara will discuss one of the ongoing, perennial, contentious issues around comics at libraries: how to best catalogue and shelf them. Different libraries do it differently, but one thing’s for sure, comics present challenges and the general rules don’t apply. Tara will present some guidelines and a framework. 

Matthew Noe is the President of the American Library Association's Graphic Novels and Comics Roundtable, he’s an academic librarian and a champion of graphic medicine. Matthew will join us live from the US to talk about the GNCRT, their past achievements, current programs and future plans. Matthew will also talk about graphic medicine, a fast growing movement and genre with comics that explore and contain narratives associated to healthcare. Comics are a very accessible and powerful medium for graphic medicine.

Thursday October 14 at 1pm AEDT (online - registration required)

Duration: 1 hour

Register for the free webinar now.

ALIA CPD Scheme Hours

If you are a member of the ALIA PD Scheme or Proficiency Recognition Program (PRP) you can log and reflect on your time spent engaging with ALIA Virtual Showcases for PD hours. There is no cap on the number of hours you can claim - the total is simply the number of hours that you can spend actively learning and engaging in the conference content. This will vary from person to person.

GNCRT / ALIA Graphic Crossover Event: Comics Librarians Talk Shop Across the World

The first Crossover Event between the ALA's Graphic Novels and Comics Roundtable and ALIA's Graphic Novels and Comics group was a success. We had lots of people joining the webinar live and now you can access the recording on the American Library Association's YouTube page.

"Join librarians around the world as they discuss comic books/graphic novels and what they mean for libraries. We will talk shop about collection development, the impact of comics across different types of libraries, and the brand new reading lists being created by the Graphic Novels and Comics Round Table as well as monthly round up lists created by ALIA Graphic. 

We will also talk about - with physical libraries being closed - how each of us and our libraries are continuing to serve our communities during a time of crisis - how we each are ‘finding our place at the library’ virtually and through our #LibcomixOnline communities. For more information on GNCRT and our #LibcomixOnline initiatives, please visit: http://www.ala.org/rt/gncrt/libcomix-online

We're going #LibComixOnline

Library buildings are closed. Schools are closed. Conventions and book launches have been cancelled.

As everyone scrambles to move their services online and attempts to figure out what to do during social isolation, we thought this was an opportunity to try something new.

The American Library Association's Graphic Novels and Comics Roundtable(GNCRT) has announced an online initiative that "will spotlight online comic reading and recommendations, resources and toolkits, and other #libcomix content virtually through #LibComixOnline. These series of events and spotlighted resources will feature live streamed webinars, recorded interviews and discussions with some of our favourite creators, stores, and libraries plus virtual brainstorming sessions, and maybe even a few live draws or virtual art drops."

We are very proud to announce that ALIA Graphic Novels and Comics is joining the GNCRT on this project. We will, of course, share the content they create and publish but we will also create some content of our own and, even better, some content in collaboration with them.

These are some of the planned events that we will roll out in the coming weeks:

• Compile and share comics related resources for everyone who's staying at home (printables, learning activities, etc) 
• Recorded interviews and creator meet ups with some of our favourite Australian creators
• Webinars for librarians on different aspects of comics librarianship
• Live drawing parties online 

Best of all, there will be some crossover ALIA Graphic & GNCRT events with Australian comics creators speaking with creators from the US and Canada. 

We already have three Australian creators confirmed and it's fair to say that we're very excited!

The #LibComixOnline tab on our page will be updated regularly and we'll keep you posted as soon as we have more details.

The first event has already been announced and should not be missed:

April 1: Collection Development and Readers' Advisory with GNCRT President Amie Wright and special guest. The discussion will cover new and upcoming titles, recommended back issues and best practices. Attendees can weigh in with their faves or ask for advice.