If you have ever worked with a middle schooler, you know they love graphic novels. Now more than ever, they are also demanding manga, or Japanese graphic novels. Along with manga, there is manhwa (South Korea), manhua (China), as well as other works with manga-esque illustrations from around the world. Manga is not my area of expertise, but I was a big fan of several anime series growing up, such as Dragon Ball Z, Rurouni Kenshin, and Pokémon. I have also always been drawn to graphic novels and find the expressiveness of the illustrations, and how those illustrations help drive the plot, to be engaging on many levels. Because of this, I find it easy to relate to your average middle schooler’s insatiable thirst for graphic novels and manga. And because keeping my students reading is my top priority, I have always dedicated a significant portion of my collection development fund to expanding our graphic novel selection. I have often said that I could spend my entire book budget on graphic novels and the kids would read them, and I say that only slightly in jest. But with so many other amazing novels, inspiring nonfiction, and materials needed for curricular connections, I have never really been able to dedicate as much money as I would have liked to this section of the library. The Vision to Reality Grant gave me the flexibility to explore new releases, expand on popular authors, and even work on expanding lengthy manga series. The project that unfolded during the 2025-2026 school year was titled “Drawn to the Library: Graphic Novel and Manga Collection Overhaul.”
Our Goal
The Vision to Reality Grant for the 2025-2026 school year really came at the perfect time for us to expand our graphic novel and manga collection. Waynflete School adopted a new schedule with 70 minute blocks, an increase from the previous year’s 50 minutes. Also, the school adopted a phone free policy across all grades. To accommodate the new needs of students during longer blocks, who are no longer attached to their phones, we felt that increasing access to visually appealing graphic novels would greatly benefit our students’ reading habits. Also, the short chapters and visual nature of most graphic novels lend themself to being the type of material that can be picked up and read for a short amount of time, which works well with longer blocks.
While our middle school was already phone free, the increased class length did cause some initial concern as to the feasibility of keeping middle school students engaged for that length of time. At this point in the year, I think the majority of those concerns have been alleviated, and my fellow teachers in the classrooms have done an excellent job of utilizing the full 70 minutes and incorporating both physical and mental breaks as needed. One area where I thought the impact of 70 minute blocks might really be felt was during the middle school’s supervised study hall. By providing high demand reading material such as graphic novels, we hoped to alleviate some of the pressure on study hall proctors by diverting some of those students into the library. Because we are an EC-12 school, our 6-12 students share a library, which is in the upper school building. This often creates an environment populated with high school students who can be seen as intimidating to our middle schoolers. By targeting the funding from the Vision to Reality Grant to collection development toward middle school students, we intended to increase ownership of the library by our middle schoolers and create an environment that is both welcoming to them and provides reading materials that they frequently desire. Without the funding for the grant, this would not have been possible, as the middle school has the smallest student body and, therefore, the smallest budget.
Learning More about Manga
While I knew that middle schoolers like graphic novels and manga, the first question was really: where to begin? This required learning a lot more about manga. I do have some familiarity with popular manga series, and there are certain manga series that I enjoy. This really forced me to look at this project through an impartial lens, to avoid getting stuck in the trap of buying material that I think people would like because I personally think they are good, as opposed to what books are actually in demand and well received by middle school students. My approach to this was to attend as many webinars on Manga and graphic novel collection development as I could find. The most beneficial webinar I viewed was presented by Britt Plotsky, the Manga Monarch. She provided a very informative overview of manga’s popularity, supported by her own library statistics as well as snapshots of manga on a national and global scale. She also provided a list of other Manga resources, including her own reviews of manga issues and series. This was very helpful for determining the appropriateness of some of these books for a middle school audience. Lastly, she included recommendations of other manga and graphic novel resources to use. Those included Good Comics for Kids, The Graphic Library, Manga Bookshelf, Manga Librarian, Manga Monarch, No Flying No Tight, and the ALA Graphic Novel and Comics Round Table. The Manga Librarian also includes a Wakelet of every manga resource she has, which is pretty comprehensive. Some of the other webinars included a reader’s advisor, which was also helpful, but I learned through a couple of accidental purchases that librarians’ idea of what is age appropriate can vary to some degree.
Making Difficult Choices
As badly as I wanted to buy the entire box set of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z for my own personal satisfaction, I knew I had to plan my spending out carefully to make sure that I was getting a wide range of titles that covered different interests and would support our readers of different ages. I also wanted to ensure that I was maximizing the amount of books we could purchase with the grant money, so I created a spreadsheet to keep track of what titles I wanted and how much they cost through different retailers.
I found that 3-in-1 manga issues were typically a lot cheaper, so I tended to favor those, especially for some of the longer manga series. Student feedback also directed me to favor 3-in-1s. One student suggested that since they read the books so fast, it is a lot easier to transport and keep track of the 3-in-1 volumes. If it prevents a book from getting lost, I am all for it. I also found several series that had small box sets, and felt comfortable buying these if they were around 5 volumes.
The sheet was primarily used to compare and contrast all the different price options. For example, is a box set the best option, or maybe buying each issue from our library wholesale provider? Is there a 3-in-1available, or can I find like-new used copies for the best price? All these considerations helped me stretch this money as far as possible and maximize the number of books we were able to add to the collection. A final difficult decision was how to divide the funds between manga and other graphic novels. I had initially intended to do a 60/40 split, favoring graphic novels. But as the demand for manga was there, and this has been an under-purchased area of our library, it ended up being closer to 60/40, favoring manga titles. This also unfolded organically, as there was demand from students for specific manga titles, while the demand for other graphic novels was a more general enjoyment of the medium. As non-manga style graphic novels are a regular part of my collection development and manga titles have been more frequently bought on an on-demand basis, dedicating a larger portion of the grant to manga titles felt justified. Not only did it bolster underrepresented materials in our library, but it also forced me to develop a better professional understanding of manga, which will serve to benefit future collection development.
We ended up with about 200 books, though a small amount of that total came from my yearly book purchasing budget, as I continued to purchase graphic novels with my regular book buying budget. That is this many middle schoolers worth of books!

• Middle school students holding some of the books added during this project.
  Considering What to Buy: This project came at an interesting time, as we switched our library’s management software at the end of last school year, so I did not have circulation statistics to base these decisions on. I felt a bit more comfortable with graphic novel selection and typically relied on starred reviews to direct my purchasing, especially from School Library Journal. I also expanded popular series and authors such as Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales, Raina Telgemeier,  Svetlana Chmakova, Shannon Hale, Lee Knox Ostertag, and Kayla Miller. We were also able to replace some lost and well-loved copies of some of those favorite authors. I also added sequels to titles that have been popular here, such as Curlfriends, Miss Quinces, Beetle and the Hollowbones, and Cool Code, to name a few.  I also noticed that The Babysitter Club, Emmie & Friends, Big Nate, and comic strips like Calvin and Hobbes and Foxtrot were popular. Newer comic strip style graphic novels, such as Huda Fahmy, have also proven to be continuously popular with our readers. Many of those items were added as donations or purchased previously and fell outside of the purview of this project, though it is worth noting that there is a consistent demand for these materials.  As is typical of my collection development, I really looked toward student demand to direct my purchasing. Student requests and suggestions are always my first priority. This did result in me investing a bit more into certain series that I would have on my own, but felt worth it to keep my students reading and engaged with the library. Other considerations included books that were related to popular movies or TV shows, or books that have recent film adaptations, such as Stranger Things and Demon Slayer. I also definitely took note of the recommended titles from the webinars I attended, especially those that provided middle school-specific readers’ advisory. This was particularly helpful with manga selection, as there were so many titles that I was unfamiliar with. These manga titles cover nearly every genre imaginable, including sports fiction, romance, science fiction, as well as the expected action and adventure tales. Some of these manga series are even considered quite educational, such as Dinosaur Sanctuary and Cells at Work. I will note that I did observe that the action and adventure manga are circulating the best. These recommendations were a great starting point, but the necessary work of finding reliable reviews of these books remained. 
  Reviewing the titles: I quickly discovered that finding professional reviews of manga is incredibly difficult, and not only that, but often only the first volume of a series is reviewed. As I also quickly learned, while the first volume of a series might be targeted toward middle school readers, later issues may contain more mature topics or content. The Manga Monarch was helpful in finding some reviews and provided a fairly detailed description of violence, language, sexual situations, and drug/alcohol use. She even includes individual volume reviews (to some extent), so later issues with vastly different maturity ratings are pointed out. These reviews come from Britt Plotsy’s personal reading and reviewing of manga titles, so are limited to what she has read and categorized. I also found Manga Librarian, Manga in the Middle, and Manga Bookshelf to have useful reviews. 
  Another piece of advice I gathered from one of the manga webinars I watched was that IMDb reviews of a manga’s anime adaptation can be a helpful starting point. These are all good options when your favorite review database does not have the information that you need.  Reviews for graphic novels were much easier to find through your typical avenues. My personal favorite review database is Novelist Plus. If you have access to this database, it typically provides reviews from sources such as School Library Journal, Kirkus, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly, all in one place for a title if they are available. 
  Cataloging, Processing, and Setting the Books Free: After all the fun of purchasing wore off, it then became time to get to work so that these books could go to students. There was also a huge delay with our wholesale book distributor, Ingram. This resulted in some of these books taking multiple months to arrive, which was disappointing for both the students and me. Cataloging all these new items really opened up a few flaws in our current records, namely the lack of series information. As new items came in, especially those that were continuations of existing series in our collections, it necessitated the addition of that series information. I also wanted to include the volume number in the series so that students are more easily able to find the next item. This was treated as local catalog information, so I was able to adopt the language that would be most likely searched by our students. This was done for both the convenience of searching and the lack of existing series information for many titles. 
  As I worked through some of this information, I realized that we have a large amount of existing records to go through to update and standardize our series information. Other unique cataloging changes included adding graphic novel and manga as genres. Some may argue that those are not genres, but a medium, though we find it helpful for our readers to be able to sort those items in that way. Though it did take some time to catalog and process all the books, thanks to some very helpful volunteers, the books were ready for students!   Me halfway through cataloging:

(Librarian pounding head into their computer after cataloging 200 graphic novels.)
Another big consideration was whether manga should have its own section of the library, as currently they are interfiled with the rest of the graphic novels. While this has some appeal due to the demand for some students specifically for manga, it opened up many questions, such as what to do with the manhwa and manhau, or English publication with manga-style illustration. It still seems like this could benefit our readers when we have more time to undertake a project of this magnitude. The ability to separate the manga from the graphic novels would also necessitate more shelf space, another project to be considered at a later date.
The Results: As mentioned above, we were able to purchase around 200 items, which made a visible impact on our middle school and young adult graphic novel collections, which previously included about 525 items. There was a noticeable increase in items when looking at the shelves. These photos show our graphic novel sections before and after the project in our Middle School Graphic Novel section:

• A view of our middle school graphic novels before the project. 

A view of our middle school graphic novels after the project.
And in our Young Adult Graphic Novel section:

First view of the young adult graphic novels before the project.

• Second view of the young adult graphic novel section before the project. 

• First view of our young adult graphic novel section after the project.

• Second view of our graphic novel section after the project. 
  There has also been a noticeable increase in middle school students coming to the library throughout the day, especially during their study hall and office hours. These are the times they have the most freedom to visit the library, as middle school students do not have any unsupervised time. As a middle school librarian, it has always been important to me that the middle school students feel that the library is their space, despite the constant presence of intimidating high schoolers. Other than providing the materials that best fit their desires, this project was intended to help create a more welcoming space for middle school students in the library, as it happens to be an upper school building. By heavily investing in materials targeted towards that age range, I hoped to encourage a more consistent presence of middle school students and increase the amount of time they spend in the library during each visit.  We do not keep visitation statistics, but I have personally noticed this increase in middle school students visiting the library. This is partially due to efforts to encourage library use during office hours and study hall in an attempt to alleviate some of the pressure of long blocks on other teachers who have supervision duties during those times, but I also feel that this collection development project has shown middle schoolers that we have their reading interesting in mind and are working to make the library one of their go to places to hang out on campus. I have often felt that middle schoolers are some of the most frequent readers in our library, so it was really a pleasure to dedicate so much focus to developing an area of the library they hold so dear. 

Students browsing in the graphic novel section.
While purchasing was targeted at a middle school audience, we also noticed an increase in upper school students utilizing the new graphic novels and manga additions. One of the original ideas behind this project was that the graphic novel and manga medium lend themselves to being easy to pick up and quickly read, even when a student might not have a lot of time. As upper school students tend to be much busier with schoolwork, we often see them reading less. The increase in students’ reading, especially those who I don’t see checking out books from the library as often as others, was a very positive result of this project. One high school student even mentioned that because they watched the show, they thought they wanted to check out the book for the One Piece series. Other students, who I would consider some of our more frequent readers, were happy to see additions to their favorite series and suggest other titles. I was happy to see that this project had such a positive impact on upper school students. As we recently switched our library’s ILS, we do not have statistics to compare with last year. Still, we all feel that there has been a general increase in circulation this year. Feedback from students has also been positive. Responses have included: 
“Whoa, you have that!”  “Oh my god, that is my favorite book!”  “That book was amazing.”  “Yes! I have been waiting to read this.”
“It would be cool if you had Spy x Family… wait, you do?!”
Or my personal favorite: “Do you have any more Bleach?”
I am very grateful to AISL for organizing the Vision to Reality Grant. It has allowed for a significant increase in a section of our library that was underrepresented and forced me to take a deeper look at what materials would best suit our students’ needs in that area. It also allowed me to dedicate more time and materials to support our middle school students and help move our library to a more middle school friendly area. I found the entire process very helpful professionally, as I now know a lot more about manga and can more closely relate to the students who love the medium. Expansion of the other graphic novels was also a pleasure, as I have always felt a spark of creativity from viewing the amazing artwork present in these books. I am hopeful that others will also be inspired by these works and that this project will inspire continued development in graphic novels at our school. Improving the collection in this way would have taken years without the Vision to Reality Grant, and I truly feel that these improvements would not have been possible without it. While I wrap up this project, it has also brought to light other areas that the library can improve, such as improved records and shelf spacing. These, among a few other projects, will be the next step in our continuous attempt to improve the library and make it a welcoming and desirable place for students to enjoy.