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

by | Oct 25, 2022 | professional development, webinar | 0 comments

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

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