An up-to-date spot for library staff serving youth around Wisconsin to find relevant news, events, and resources. Links should be correct at the time of publication. If a link is incorrect, please contact the blog administrator within a month of publication. Links on older posts may have changed. Any YSS member wishing to write posts, please e-mail us at yss.wla@gmail.com.
Thursday, January 22, 2026
Throw-it Thursday: What the Manga?!
Wednesday, August 27, 2025
American Manga Awards Nominees and Winners
| Photo by Katie Alford |
I plan to write about building Manga collections, advocating for it, and how to stay up to date on new manga titles in a later blog post but for now I want to shout out the American Manga Awards.
The second annual awards announced their winner last Thursday (determined by votes from professionals working in an editorial capacity with North American manga publishers). The pertinent ones for Teen collections were:
- Best New Manga: The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't a Guy at All, Volume 1, by Sumiko Arai (Yen Press) (Rated T, 13+)
- Best Continuing Manga Series: The Apothecary Diaries, Volumes 12 - 13, by Hyuganatsu, with art by Nekokurage (Square Enix Manga & Books) (Rated T, 13+)
- Best New Edition of Classic Manga: Ashita no Joe: Fighting for Tomorrow, Volumes 1-2, by Asao Takamori and Tetsuya Chiba (Kodansha) (Rated OT, 16+)
- also won for Best Lettering
The Manga Librarian, Ashley Hawkins, wrote a great round up of the nominees with links to reviews for most of the titles. The reviews come from SLJ, Booklist, Manga in the Middle, Anime News Network, and the Manga Librarian herself. I found it incredibly helpful to have all the titles and links in one place.
To the entire round up, stop here. [American Manga Awards: Nominee Review Round Up! Ashley Hawkins. Manga Librarian blog. August 17, 2025.]
Thursday, July 7, 2022
More and More Manga: A Primer from School Library Journal
Looking to build a manga collection? School Library Journal has your back!
Brigid Alverson's SLJ.com article, More and More Manga: An Updated Primer on Japanese Comic Books and Graphic Novels , introduces the basics: terminology, publishers, and more...
Grow, collections, GROW!
Thursday, June 13, 2019
Collection Development: Manga
According to recent information from The NPD Group, "book sales in the manga subcategory in the retail trade channel grew 16 percent from January 1, 2019 to May 11, 2019, exceeding the 5 percent growth of the total adult-comic/graphic-novel category." The information includes major book sellers like Barnes & Noble, as well as stores like Target, and online retailers like Amazon. It does not include specialty comic book stores. A trend seen as leading to this spike in manga sales is the availability of Japanese anime shows and movies from online platforms including Hulu and Netflix.
Read the rest of the article HERE.
Public Libraries Online has a great post about manga: Manga: Tips for A Great Library Collection
The New York Public Library has a starter post for those who have not explored manga before: A Beginner's Guide to Manga

