My monthly tween manga club is one of my favourite programs, largely because I am a life-long manga and anime nerd, and it thrills me to be able to share my passion with kids who love Japanese comics and animation as much as I do. Programs like this simply didn’t exist when I was a nerdy tween!
My tween manga club is formatted much like a very laid back book club. Tweens drop in, we chat about what we’re reading, I share a few books from the collection, and we make a craft. This is usually the most popular part of the program, as well as the part when we get the most conversations going – it can be a lot easier to talk in front of a group when you can keep your nervous hands busy with a craft, and when the rest of the kids are busy working on their own crafts, and not all watching you!
Here are a few crafts I’ve done with my tween manga club over the past few months, and which have worked very well. A quick note – my participants do tend to be on the younger side of tween, with 8 and 9 year olds heavily represented, so what works for my group might not work as well for yours.
Manga Collage Bookmarks
This is a super easy craft, and a great one to start your program off with – simply cut out strips of cardstock, then destroy discarded manga and manga magazines to create collage bookmarks! We “laminated” ours with a layer of book tape, and added a little yarn tassel to finish them off. Easy peasy!
Check out Playful Learning’s collage bookmark post for more inspiration.
Mini Zines
Making mini books and “zines” is an old standby of mine, and it’s always a crowd-pleaser. There are several different ways to make mini books, but these are a few of my favourite sites for showing you how its done. Kids can work on their own manga-themed zines, or work together as groups. This is a project you can do over several sessions, too – spend some time deciding and planning out the subject matter, the style (manga art can really vary depending on the theme/subject/artist), even the title of each zine! Kids can create their own manga, or perhaps make an introduction to their favorite series. This is such a great craft because it’s very creative, can be adapted to any group size or age level, and really only requires blank paper and drawing supplies – perfect for the librarian on a budget!
Drawing Practice
Sometimes the best programs are the simplest! Pull out of bunch of manga-themed drawing books from your collection, add some blank paper, pencils and erasers, and have an old fashioned drawing session! Kids can chat while they draw, and there’s no pressure to create anything specific, making this a very relaxed program (perfect for today’s over-pressured, over-scheduled kids) – it’s simply about the process and the experience. It’s also a good opportunity to highlight your library’s drawing collection!
Onigiri Plushies
Alas I don’t have a photo of the onigiri plushies we made, I was so distracted by how much fun it was to make them! This craft does involve sewing needles, which should be fine with tweens, but if you’re working in a public area (as opposed to a meeting room), be very mindful of where all those sewing needles, lest a curious wandering toddler find one! I used this pattern to make them (we didn’t turn ours into keychains), and it was pretty straightforward and lots of fun – tweens should be able to finish one in an hour, especially if your group is a bit older.
If you’re looking for more amazing manga-themed ideas for your library, definitely check out the website Mangatize your Library – this is a really fantastic resource for anyone interesting in including more manga and anime in their programming!
These activities look like they were so much fun! My daughter would have loved a program like this when she was a tween 😊
Oh my goodness, me too!!