CURRENT POSITION School Librarian, New York City Department of Education, Queens, NY DEGREE MLS School Media, Queens College, City University of New York, 2010 FOLLOW @JRLibrarian; mangainlibraries.com Photo by Joe Sanchez

Manga Maven

Jillian Rudes didn’t grow up reading manga. But when she discovered it in her first year as a school librarian, she realized that it is a critical format for teaching, cultivating a love of reading, and giving kids what they want, and took a deep dive in, reading everything she could get her hands on.  

For teens, “there’s something about being able to really relate to these characters,” she says. “Their stories can continue for multiple volumes, so you can grow up with these characters, you can face challenges together.”  

Rudes’s school had only 10 manga titles, so she purchased a circulating collection, started the school’s first manga club, and advocated for manga as part of the curriculum—she now teaches a 12th-grade class, “Japanese Visual Storytelling,” that explores the social-emotional development of characters in manga. In the past year, the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) has seen close to 105,000 manga titles circulate through OverDrive Education’s Sora app, many through a collection Rudes curated. She was recently awarded a $5,000 American Association of School Librarians Inspire Collection Development Grant to help build the collection. 

Rudes also recognized the need for professional development around manga for school librarians—many don’t understand how to select age-appropriate material, or need context to better understand the culture and artwork—and in 2018 created the position of Japanese Culture and Manga Librarian in collaboration with NYCDOE. In this role, she provides manga professional development for about 250 school librarians, maintains a strong print and digital collection, publishes articles, and answers questions about collection development and challenges. In 2021 she founded Manga in Libraries, a series of free one-hour webinars sponsored by the New York City School Librarians’ Association and the American Library Association’s Graphic Novels and Comics Round Table for public and school librarians and nonlibrary educators. The series, which she continues to host, covers topics including manga challenges and censorship; Black, Indigenous, and people of color representation in manga; using manga as a teaching tool; and manga’s literary value. It’s garnered more than 1,600 registrations and 3,600 views.  

Manga helps teens navigate challenges and relate to other people’s journeys—particularly in the past two years, when they have been so isolated, Rudes says. “Everything we want kids to get out of a reading experience, they are getting out of manga.”