Hey everybody, we are back and I am so excited. We get to talk to Ashley today, who is one of the first resources I go to when I'm thinking about manga from my library, from my school library, because Ashley is one of those people who just knows everything there is to know about manga. So she is an amazing resource. I'm so glad she's here to share. And the lesson she's sharing, of course, tied it with manga today, but not just manga, it's got some other fun little twists to it too.
So I'm really looking forward to talking about this, but... I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me back up and say, welcome Ashley. Why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are, where you're So I am Ashley Hawkins. I am commonly known on the internet as the manga librarian, but I am actually a regular school librarian, just like everybody else. I work in Brooklyn at an elementary school.
I transitioned last year from years upon years of working in secondary to being a 3K through five school librarian. So, and part of that was actually because I have been doing all this work with manga and the people who needed my help the most seemed to be elementary school librarians and I'm like, well, I'd better go get in there and go do the work. And that's actually what I did. went and I transitioned in and also I teach at Queens College. teach.
up -and -coming school librarian, so I wanted to go get the experience. so, yeah. That's amazing. Wow. I don't know too many people who would say, people are looking to me for some suggestions. So I'm going to change my entire career to go and do something a little bit different than I would have been doing. That's very, that's very generous of you. I think I would say, how did you end up in librarianship in the first place?
What was sort of your path to the So my mom was actually a library paraprofessional before she became a classroom teacher. And actually she was on the track to be a media library specialist in Florida. And she just found it easier to go straight into the classroom. found it. position easier that way.
It used to be like you had to in Florida you had to wait for somebody to die to get that position so she was like I need that bump in pay which was not which Florida teachers don't make very much but Florida paraprofessionals make nothing and we really needed well she really needed that so That kind of had some formational things, but I started out as an English teacher and I really was tired of my love is connecting. young people with what they love to read.
And when you're in the classroom, you're more teaching to a test. And so I think it's a common tale of people who move transition into librarianship is I want to actually work with young people on loving to read and actually reading. So that's why I made that transition. There was also some other stuff that kind of went in there. that is very nebulous.
For a little while I was actually studying museum librarianship because I was almost ready to totally leave education and was ready to like... do like doing like museum programming and education, but I missed kids too much. There isn't much interaction with young people in those spaces. So I jumped back in. Nice, well we are really lucky to have you. So I'm glad that you came back. So today you're going to be sharing about this really neat lesson slash project slash program that you did.
And I don't want to give too much away. So before we dive into the specifics of it, can you maybe give us a little bit of background? Like how did you end up doing this program that you ended So it came from a variety of things. So as you may know, and as other people may know, I have a book coming out with a group of other really wonderful librarians. It's co -written with Sarah Smith, Julie Stivers, Emily Radica, Sibyl Muna Torre. And it actually was all, it's actually a lesson book from ALA.
So we did a lot of work in like thinking about lesson planning and everything and that was really refreshing to think about from that perspective. So I started to plug in what we'd already done into what I was doing because because of the way the DOE works you actually cannot use anything that you cannot make money off of anything that you do during your work day. We have what's called a conflict of interest. So also like all of the writing for the I had to do completely in my off hours.
I can't use my copy of Microsoft Word to like look at any of our files Because I cannot like there's like all these rules So like as start as I'm starting to plug it in I'm like I want to I'm also like getting into the meat and potatoes of elementary education which is like way more curriculum based than when I was in high school librarianship.
So I was reading Maura Madigan's book on project -based learning and I'm like I love this, but I want to do something that's a little bit more like what I want to do. also there's like a big push for project -based learning in NYC. And I'm like, let me just, I want to, I want to build it. And I learn more from building and I learn more from making. And also I wanted to. really build more manga and comics based programming. And there were also just a lot of things I wanted to do with my kids.
Because I was the first, like I came in, there had been no librarian for a couple of years. And so I was like, I was the first person who had been like, yeah, you can read manga, you can read graphic novels. There were no graphic novels in this library. There was one copy of Dog Man that the previous librarian had kept behind the desk as like a, I think he was. And I'm like, my God, I'm the person who wrote the article to not do that. So, and it was just Dog Man number one.
There was no Raina Telgemeier, there was nothing. And I'm like, God, we needed, we had to do some deep work. and so I wanted to do a lot of like work, like let's really embrace that this is what the kids really love and really love engaging with. And so I'm very lucky that there is a speech teacher who is just as big of a nerd as I am. and she's also a bit younger, so she has some of the energy that I'm starting to lose. so, you know, she's got that, Gen Z sort of like verve.
She's like a late millennial early Gen Z. So she's got that oomph. She still cosplays. She still like goes to conventions and things. I'm way more laid back. And I was like, hey, let's, our powers combined a little bit. exactly. And I was like, I have this vision.
of like I really want to do some project -based learning and the idea that I had was if you go to a convention there is something called an artist alley and an artist alley is like actually this really wonderful place where there's a lot of making happening. Artists are putting out their work, they can be zines, they can be prints and all sorts of things in fact like people who are listening won't be able to see it, but you can see I've got prints that are up on the wall.
Some of them are from artists from Japan, but the big one actually comes from a convention that we went to. Hmm. Just want to pause for one second and clarify that we're talking about comic conventions as opposed to like ALA library conventions, sort of, because I know sometimes we've got our authors at our library conventions, but this is, we're talking Comic -Cons here. Yeah, we're talking like New York Comic Con, anime conventions, anime NYC, all your nerd cons, Otakon, things like that.
You will have an artist alley, and the artist alley is actually fairly big. It's not as big as what we call the dealer hall. But it's actually where I tend to get most of the stuff that I actually will spend money on because I like supporting like small creators and I love seeing their individual creations. so I was like, wouldn't it be cool to create this context for making for the kids where they are creating their own comics or fan art?
with the idea that they are participating in an artist alley. And so that's what we set up. That was the idea for the overarching project -based learning. And then it culminated in us having our own sort of mini con. We had bigger ideas for something bigger, but time got away from us. Basically, Admin planned way too many things for June. So, so we didn't have the time that we wanted.
And that actually is something that maybe we'll get into later about like what we learned and what we planned for later. But we were like, let's go with this. And then what was great with working with a speech speech pathologist is that we were able to attack from more angles than I typically could because we were able to really think about like how do we make the lesson accessible. Love that.
And also, like, she could take more time with students that I don't have very much time, even though I do get to teach every single student in the school. That also means, like, you only get 45 minutes with every single student in the school. She gets more time with those students who needed more time to, work with them.
And she went into our ICT classes, which are our classes that need more time, who have students who have more learning and she went in and she did additional lessons with them to get them to where they needed to be and we did more collaboration within those classes where they worked together on their comic so they were partnered up a little bit with a few a few partnerships did break up because of creative differences but we were able to like
do a lot of learning about that type of friction and like how creative friction can happen and how sometimes you may need to pull apart in order to create your best work. Or sometimes you have to lean into the friction and work through it. And it just, it worked out really well. And yeah.
elements are getting just pulled into this because I know it's easy for librarians to have like an art display, like we're going to put up the kids artwork from art class or something, but you're making such a concrete connection between art and reading and helping them see that like this is, I mean, I'm sure I'm jumping ahead a little bit here, but like I can completely imagine having a conversation with them about how hard artists work to graphic novels and comics and manga.
And sometimes when we read those, we flip through them because there's not a lot of words on the page and our eye can really shift from action to action really quickly. And you might devour one of those books that took how many months slash years to create. So that must have been, I can see that being a really interesting conversation to have with the kids. Yeah, and we do have those conversations because also I personally know people who create these things.
And so I have those conversations with them like, yeah, my friend, like a friend of mine wrote that, that thing that you're reading and a friend of, so, you know, it's like, by the way, I know John Green who wrote Investigators Yeah, he's been writing these for years and yeah, he actually has the whole process that he goes through these.
I'm very lucky that my husband went to SVA and he went to SVA at the time that a lot of people who created really incredible, who are creators of really cool things also went. So he knows them so by virtue I know them. That's amazing. A, I imagine that's amazing street cred with your students like, yeah, I know the person who created this. B, I've got to confess ignorance. I don't know SVA. So SVA is School of Visual Arts. So yeah, and my husband studied cartooning.
he went to school with some pretty pig names. actually am afraid to say a couple of them. So just because they're people he knows. But. But yeah, so it's like you get to like make those connections of like, know, like, yeah, you know, these people actually do make these things. And we watched also there, we have Discovery Ed, so we watched, there's like a short that's actually about a kid that goes and visits a manga creator and sits with her and goes through her process.
So we did that with, the upper level kids, because it's a little bit denser for the lower kids. So I did this for K through five. I didn't do it with my three K pre -K babies. It was a little bit too outside of their range and also their day looks a little different. Hmm. I imagine you'd need a pretty decent chunk of time. Actually, maybe we should take a step in a step closer.
I'm not sure which direction we're stepping in, but when the when you start this with the students, like what are they seeing when you begin this? Is there like a lesson that you start with to sort of like give them an overview or how does that unfold? So we start off by reading a book called The Discovery of Anime and Manga. Because for some of them, some of my kids are very versed in anime and manga and some of them aren't.
There were actually kids that I actually, there's a lesson that will be in the book that's actually about how to introduce a child who's in first, second grade, how to read manga. But. We've actually... in. You mentioned your book before and I cannot wait to get my hands on it and I want to make sure everybody knows the title is Manga Goes to School Cultivating Engagement and Inclusion in K -12 Settings. How could you not want that in your professional library? Holy smokes.
I am so looking forward to getting my hands on one. Sorry, I didn't mean to pull us off task, but okay. So there's a lesson there to help us out, but the students are going to kind of get this intro to like here's kind of what we're talking about. Okay, this makes Yeah, so there's a really great book that works for, I read it through K through five. And it worked, you can, you know, know, you can work with a picture book on different levels depending on who it is you're reading it to.
And you could read this all the way up to 12th grade and honestly get in there with kids. And it was really great because I could hone in on what I wanted to hone in depending on the level and explain various things. I could even kind of skip stuff if I needed to skip stuff that was maybe a little bit too high level for my kindergarten babies. Mm -hmm. And it's just a really good book for introducing that. And it also starts off at a convention. So it was a really good sort of bridge.
So it's like it takes place at a convention and then you kind of go on this magical journey through time and space, through all of the history of manga and anime as well. But it's like going through the continuity and it's it's pretty well done. The history is accurate and it touches on some key properties. it's also like, you get to the Pokemon page and it's like everybody, it's like the Beatles walked in in the 60s. They're just yelling, Pikachu!
Yeah You get to the Dragon Ball page, they're like, it's Goku. So you get that very visceral connections and then the kids who don't know quite what's going on, they're like, what is this? my God. I need to know. So we made all those sort of connections and then we sort of bridged it into, okay, there's also this thing that you do at conventions. See how in the book they're there at the convention and people are there and they're in costume. They're there and they're doing these things.
Well, you're going to be the artist and you're going to create. Don't you like to kids always like to draw their favorite things? It's actually how Yeah, it's actually how a lot of famous cartoonists actually start. Bill Watterson in one of his, memorial, like his anniversary editions of Calvin and Hobbes, he actually talks about a story of when he got in trouble for plagiarizing a drawing of Snoopy.
there's like a continuity of kids who love to draw actually will usually start off with things that are familiar to them and then they progress to drawing something original. And so we're like, you're gonna draw something you love to draw and we're gonna go through it. And also I can draw a little bit. I'm not like a fine artist, but I go through and I teach them how to draw certain like very basic drawing things. I was kind of lucky also, like I worked at Disney.
when I was in my early 20s and I worked alongside somebody who did like, he was in the animation section, which really means like he just, he drew things, he drew pictures of Mickey Mouse for people. And I learned the very basics of like drawing, like different things. So. We kind of would go through that. I would do basic drawing lessons. And there's also really great tutorials, for kids that wanna go deeper or who have higher skills, there's great tutorials on YouTube. You can set them free.
I'll toss in that Jarrett Lerner's website has some really great, very simple to draw, like do this, do this, do this, now you've got a dragon, or you've got a ghost, or I use those with my middle school kids sometimes, and I'm looking to fill little bit of time, and they're so simple, but they're so fun. So I'm sure there's a million great tutorials out there of different caliber and levels for all your kids.
Yeah, we actually used the Jarrett Lerner, like, finish the comic things for the little ones. They really loved finish, like, where there's two panels and then they've got to do the next two panels. And that was really great also for teaching continuity because otherwise their first attempts sometimes were kind of nonsensical. And I would be like, but does that make sense with what? Jared Lerner drew in these first two things and then they kind of go, no, it doesn't.
And I'd be like, okay, here's another one. We went through a lot of copies. You do go through a lot of copies and a lot of paper when you do this. But yeah, and that's actually in there in the lesson plans as one of the resources that you can use. And I also made just blank comic pages through Canva because they have like the comic frames and I put a couple of them and made some and very simple.
And we did a lot of just so that's why we said manga and comic because some kids leaned more towards just kind of creating more like dog man ask comics and it's like. Mm -hmm. that's cool. know, when you go to New York Comic Con, San Diego Comic Con, there are people who are totally into this side and totally into that side. It's fine. Embrace, I want to have them embrace whatever they're most passionate about. Absolutely. I love that. So they get to do some drawing.
They get a little bit of a history of where this all came from. They've got some models to help them out. They once they've started to sort of create their stories. How does that lead them to the artists alley setup or maybe I don't know if that's the right question. How did you transition from that into sort of the con idea that you sort of ended up So what they did is they had to choose what product they were going to ultimately make. So we did a little bit of experimentation.
And then it was like, OK, you're going to create a thing, maybe a comic. Maybe a comic is going to be a little bit outside of like a full blown comic, especially for our littler ones. Maybe that's going to be a little outside of your range. So maybe it's going to be a perler bead representation of a character.
And also that enables if a kid really really cannot draw and that's going to be like a friction point for a kid There are other ways to express your love for characters some of them made like Bracelets where it was like I love Luffy I love Hello Kitty.
I well actually know my kids are all about Koromi So it's like love how much you thought about accessibility in this because between working with your speech therapist teacher to help those kids who might need that extra support, but also just in terms of how the students are connecting with each other, with the material, you're giving them so many great options here. I really, really appreciate that. That's really wonderful.
So they've got there, they come up with their product, and then how do you sort of prepare them for being in Author's Alley. So as we get there, it's like, you know, some kids finish faster and then it's like, okay, you want to move on to creating something else? Maybe. So some kids actually had multiple products. So they had like a whole arm full of beaded bracelets. and some kids had like one really intensely made thing. And that is all okay. And we were also, I also wanted to lean into that.
Like it's okay to like take your time processing something and it's okay if somebody is finished and you're not because we have time. And actually, we didn't have as much time as I thought I was gonna have because of field trips. So I lost some groups where I thought I was gonna see them four times. I saw them twice. So things were done in various levels and we were able to be comfortable with that. It helped that it was the end of the year.
So we were just kind of sliding in like, it's fine, we're gonna get there. So. It was a nice kind of way to ease out of the year. I love all of that, even if all one wanted to do was that portion of this amazing program you put together, that ties together so many different elements and lets the kids really be experts in so many different ways and lets them find the place that they can be successful and an expert.
So it kind of takes away some of that, not all of our students are gonna be able to do every single kind of task. So I love that you're giving these different options and opportunities. And then they've got all these materials and looking over the post that you made about this, I was just dying when I got to the pictures of the kids dressed in their con gear. This was so great.
So how did you sort of bring it from you've now created these things to now we're going to put So that was actually more my speech teacher. I will say that. had like, the thing is, like, I had like various ideas and she was very much like, I know how to do this. And she went forward, she talked to the creator of BlurredCon.
and she got him to make a video for our kids, like basically telling that it was a wonderful video because we have a mostly black community and also this was great because she is also black so it was great for her to be kind of the one spearheading this so that it was coming authentically. So it was very much like, also we wanted to make sure our kids feel like this is very much a thing.
And this is also spoken about in the book more from Muna's point of view, because Muna is a creator in our book who, she is black and she is a part of the anime and manga community. And... there can sometimes be an outsidership that is felt by Black nerds, Hispanic nerds, and they have so much ownership of what they read, what they consume, and there are all these corollaries to the Latin and BIPOC experience.
so it was really great to have somebody come to the kids and be like, hey, you're a part of this community and there's space for you in the community. And we also had, there is another school that she services that is a high school that has an anime club.
Mmm. and it's actually an all boys school and they all the boys sat there and they were like hey it's great that you're doing this and that you've created these things and we're so proud of you and so it was it's kind of like hyping them up a little bit before we like went into the actual con That's so great. So that was really wonderful and she really took ownership and really made that. She made the video. The reason why I didn't share it is because it's got students in it.
But it's just this wonderful thing that really made the kids feel very connected. So yeah, that was that was really great. And then I made sure we got through First Book all of those Pokemon Tournament sets. So we were able to have Pokemon Tournament going. If they hadn't finished their artwork, they actually were kind of working on it or they were showing it to each other. And of course we had cosplay and Miss Tola's our speech teacher. She brought in just like her cosplay gear.
She was just like here you try this on you try that on and just let them kind of experience what it's like to like wear a cosplay and She was actually dressed up. Also. She came in dressed up as Sailor Moon That's so awesome. I so badly want to do a con at my school someday. Someday I will get there. This is absolutely giving me millions of ideas of ways I'm going to start to build that foundation so I can get that going. man. I have a vision in my head, but I don't know if it's the reality.
What was the student's reaction to all of the, first, what was their reaction to being able to create something on their own? I imagine that they were pretty into Yeah, they had a lot of fun because it was also very different from usually my library time is very structured because usually with elementary school you are very, very structured.
It's usually you come in, we do story time, we do a little bit of discussion about the story, then we have a nice little activity and then we do checkout and then goodbye. And it's rinse, recycle, repeat. But... We actually did this as I had to stop checkout at a certain point because so many of them had, there were too many books out. And I had to be like, and we needed to do inventory. We had a bit of an issue where books had been checked out to the wrong kids.
Cause I'm not the one who actually checks the books out. won't get too deep into that, but we needed to get the books back because I needed to do inventory and see where books actually were and just mark certain things as lost and so we can start fresh this year. So I had to do a way earlier reset than I usually would. Mmm. So I was like, okay, the way we're structured, and also let's just try something a little different. Let's see how this goes.
And so they were really like into it because it was very different. And it gave them a lot of freedom. yeah, and I imagine you were doing this toward the end of the year, so you've already kind of built up expectations, they know sort of what they, you know, how they should be engaging with the library, and then once you've got that base built in, then you can start playing around with, let's try something a little bit different.
So it sounds like they really appreciated the change, but also able to sort of recognize that this is something that's different and so we're going to, you know, work with that and not lose that opportunity. Yeah, because I did tell them like if this doesn't work then I can... They also like there is a little bit of they know I came from a high school. In fact, one of our paraprofessionals is one of my former students.
So they know 100 % like I came from a nearby high school and there's like a little bit of school teachers are scary. I'm like the least scary person in the entire building. But there's like a little bit of like, we don't know what will happen if we make Miss Hawkins angry. Like my warning is sometimes like, do you want to find out what the high school Miss Hawkins is like? The high school Miss Hawkins is exactly like the elementary Miss Hawkins. But they, it's fun tease those things out.
It's a little bit of my version of Viola Swamp is high school. Miss Hawkins. I love it. So when you did the, when you ended up, you know, taking all of these amazing pieces and putting them together into the con, what kind of reaction did you see from the students? Was there, did they have much feedback about how things went? They were very excited and I think they really loved it.
The thing is, I didn't have too much more time to really parse out from the kids, in -depth feedback, because then we were into summer, basically, a couple days later. But in the immediate moment, they really seemed to love it. The response from Admin was very positive. That's awesome. So they really liked it and really want us to do it again. And so. Did any of the other teachers have any thoughts or feedback? they seemed to really like it also because they did nothing. So it was like a date.
was like they, they basically, yeah, they basically kind of sat in the back and were like, look at this. This is happening. This is great. We'll just walk it, watch Hawkins and told us do their thing. So, so yeah. Yeah. year you did this, right? This was the first time.
So I imagine there were some things that you might have learned from the experience that you're going to use again, or maybe modify if you are first of all, I guess the big question is, do you think this is something you're gonna do again? Okay, so very much on board with that. So that's awesome. So what do you think? What worked?
What maybe needs to be tweaked a little bit as you move forward with We did, when Mostola's and I kind of debriefed later, we were like, okay, so first off, we need to do it earlier in the year for a couple of reasons. The first reason was we wanted to deepen the projects more. We wanted to give more space for these. products to be more than what they wound up being because it was kind of rushed and we lost time with the kids. So we were thinking of doing it more along in like April.
We're trying to parse out when the best time is because a lot happens during an elementary school year. Mm -hmm. and you have to kind of move around like different heritage months and different already established plans. So we have to talk to admin about like, when will it actually work for, it has to work around their schedule. But we really want to like deepen.
I also want to, maybe provide a couple other options, maybe some cosplay building on the student's behalf, but that requires getting more materials than what I had. So there are other things I kind of want to do and it just will take more time and also more skills building. Mm -hmm. And there were a couple of things that I wanted to do with the students and maybe teach them that I didn't have the time to teach them.
I wanted to teach them some of them how to crochet, like the older ones, how to crochet and make amigurumi and some of those higher level skills, but there just wasn't the time to do it. if I have time, there's more. I love that the plan is we're going to make this bigger, because it was not, we didn't get a chance to do enough stuff. That's awesome, man.
And I could see even like, you were talking about having to sort of navigate different events and heritage months and maybe even classes, but I could see this even getting, maybe you pull in some of the classes and be like, you guys were learning about this. What would be maybe like a hero that might fit with that? Or Can we create a hero that would fit with this particular? How do we reflect this in our art? Or man, there's so many cool things you can do with this. it's so exciting.
It's so cool. So if somebody wanted to try this out, what is maybe one or two things they should really have at the front of their mind as they are sort of prepping themselves and or their students to dive into this? I mean, first off, it is a lot of work. So just be prepared for that. It's a lot of work. I think maybe, and it's going to look different at different levels. First off, the reason why I'm able to do this for all K through five is because I have a school of 225 students.
We're a small neighborhood school. I think for your first year, if you're at a bigger elementary school, maybe only do it with three through five. Or, you know, do some kind of a soft launch in a smaller group. Like if you've got a thousand kids trying to do what I did is gonna be, you're gonna just stress yourself out. I was stressing myself out over 225. And just if you're at like the middle school, high school level, maybe started off with just your anime club.
and have that be a project -based learning for your anime club where they are running an artist alley. And also maybe even think about making them do more of the economics kind of side of it where they actually have to sell. Even if it's for, if you do pibis type stuff, if it's for like pibis dollars or things like that. There are like a million ideas up here about how you could do it at different levels.
You could really like teach them about how to really go into this and like I added a video of somebody who actually does like artist Ali and how they set up their whole Setup, it's like a whole thing And there's a lot of thought and a lot of things that go into it and how they place products and how they do these things and how they lay them out.
And if students are at the high school age and they are serious artists and they are seriously considering going down that avenue, that is actually a big way that you make money as an illustrator is by doing artist alleys. So you could actually be preparing them for actual income. man, you've got me so excited. It's so many ideas bubbling. I am so glad that I saw you shared this online. You shared out a post that you had done with all the write -up and the links and how to do this.
And I am so glad you did. Thank you so much for sharing it because this is just, this hits on so many awesome places and I just, it excites me. It gets my brain fizzing with all the awesomeness that you could do with this. So, thank you so much for sharing We are now going to take a 90 degree turn and go into our book break. So the book break you can share any book you want or books that you want. It can be personal, professional, for adults, for kids, for whatever.
What's a book you think people should get on their TBR list? So I am going to recommend a book that I really love. and it may not be on everybody's radar because it is a book for adults. It's a book in translation. It's called What You Are Looking For Is In The Library by, yeah, Michi, hold on, let me double check Okay, I had it right. What You Are Looking For Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama. It is... it's originally Japanese.
I know that's a little predictable, but it's connected to libraries. And I think librarians will really love this book. It is a series of vignettes about various people who are all kind of missing something in their life. And they go to this small community library. So a thing about libraries in Japan is many of them are actually in community centers. So when I was doing research for the book, I visited libraries in Japan.
I went over last year and I visited, there is this one place called Tachikawa Manga Park and that is in a community center and it is a completely, it's all manga. It's a manga library. And that actually had my brain completely going crazy as a school librarian because it was, first off they had picture books.
included as like they considered it as like the continuum of like graphic literature and they had they're called tatami mats and that's actually meaning you have to take off your shoes as you come in and it's this wonderful reed flooring that's very common in Japan and so as you're walking around there's like this wonderful textural thing of like there's these this texture underneath your feet and then books were genre -fied, the manga was genre -fied.
And then it was just this wonderful experience. And then there was another one that I went to that was just a regular library, but it was also considered a community center. They actually had a cafe and then there was a floor that was completely only teens are allowed. And I tried to go and they were like, they came up to me and they saw that I was a westerner and they were like, no, no, no, no, you can't come. And I'm like, what does she want?
She saw this basically, which means I'm a librarian and they were like, And so we talked a little bit and I'm like, and I explained like, I just wanted to see it because I wanted to see how you like set up a space for teens. And they had like ping pong tables and they had like study spaces and they're like, we just don't let adults down here because we don't want any adults bothering the teens. I'm like, I completely understand. So don't worry. I will leave them alone.
I don't want to talk to any teens. I'm on vacation. You Bye. Anyway, the point being in Japan, they're part of community center. So these people go to communities, this community center, usually for some other purpose, but usually they'll be directed to the library. Like, know, you're here for a computer class.
You should go check out the library where they have books on computers and they go in ostensibly for, you know, a computer book, but they'll go meet with the librarian and the librarian is kind of this ethereal, other worldly presence. And she will always them what they have asked for, but then there'll be another book recommendation and it'll turn out to be exactly what they really need for their life.
And it'll be completely like they'll get a bunch of computer books and then a picture book like for children.
And but this picture book will like make them realize like what they didn't know about their life and then they'll go back to the library and be like my god you changed my whole life and she'll be like no you're the one who figured it out you you you did it and it's like so so wonderful because it's kind of the celebration of what books can do and what librarians can do for people and how but
also how it's about the right book coming into your life at the right moment and so it's just this really beautiful book and also it one of my favorite bookstores in Japan which is a cat bookstore. So cats meow. So it's just a wonderful, wonderful read. I feel like I should point out since our listeners can't see, you've got this amazing Bluetooth headset that has cat ears, little Hello Kitty bow. It is so awesome. And I can see your cat on your cat's cat tree in the background there.
And I see now that I'm looking about a million little cat figurines. So I'm picking up on a little bit of a theme. This is great. This book sounds amazing. I definitely am getting that on my short list of things I need to pick up, because it sounds so wonderfully warm and just, mean, who doesn't need a nice warm hug these days? And that just sounds exactly what this book is. Yeah, there's like this whole genre of books and a lot of them do future cats, which is kind of how I fell into the genre.
But a lot of them actually feature books that are just kind of like warm, cozy reads that come out of Japan. So there's that one. There's also When the Coffee Gets Cold is a very famous one, and that's actually a whole series. And that's also a series of vignettes. There's Days at the Morisaki Bookshop.
There's like a whole bunch of these books and they're all just very wonderful and they're very cozy and they're very much like about, there are a lot of books about what books can do for you and also just like the connections that you can kind of make and yeah, it's all warm and cozy. That's outstanding. Man, so we've got an amazing lesson and we've got amazing books and now we've got, I've got a whole genre of books I didn't even know I needed to dig into. So this is awesome.
Ashley, thank you so much. I cannot thank you enough for not only just being here, but for sharing out all that you share. And I am so looking forward to getting my hands on your book. Manga goes to school. I mean, you have just got you and the all -star list of manga folk who are helping our students connect with their libraries in ways that really matter to them. So that's amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank No problem, thank you!
Thank you for having me letting me share because, you know, I really wanted to let other people give this a try and share this out because I want to see manga and comic cons everywhere and in different permutations and how other people can adapt it and make it fun for their students. 100%. I can't imagine anybody would not want to get this going in their school. This is awesome. Thanks again. you!