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Growing up, I did not have a good experience with my school library. It was cold and unfriendly, and did not offer anything interesting to me. In my opinion, this is because we did not have a librarian, it was simply a room of books. In the library that I manage at Glenthorne High School, we offer a range of activities like comic book, manga and board game clubs along with Warhammer and Dungeons & Dragons, which will be discussed later in this blog post.

Since starting my comic book, manga and board game club in 2013, they have become some of our most popular programmes, regularly attracting between 40 to 50 students from across the school. Despite the national trend, throughout the school boys read more than girls, largely due to comics and manga (National Literacy Trust, 2025). This does not mean girls are reading less. According to our internal Library Management System, girls read 13 per cent more in the 2024/25 school year compared to the year before. It is heartening to see that student reading engagement is so high.

Our comic book club is popular and activities vary weekly. In addition to the growing manga and comic collection, we offer activities such as comic/manga-related quizzes and YouTube videos to help students make simple crafts using origami or coloured duct tape. Illustration-based activities where one person draws a portion of a person or creature and another person draws the remaining half without seeing the original is very popular. Creating image dice where students roll paper dice containing different illustration prompts is a lot of fun and gets students interested in drawing funny and bizarre scenarios. Pairing these activities with how-to-draw books, alongside highlighting new comics and manga has created not only a dedicated core group of comic-obsessed students but it also brings new faces to the library.

We know from that children who read comic books and manga are more engaged with reading in general. In our library, comics and manga are consistently in the top 10 most popular genres borrowed. Students love to sit and talk about these books with their friends. All of this helps create more confident readers who read on a daily basis.

It also helps that the quality of graphic novels has, in my opinion, increased greatly over the past decade since I started following the trends of reading for pleasure. Once or twice a year I bring in a comic book or manga artist to run a workshop for as many students as possible. These are extremely popular and have a huge, positive ripple effect throughout the school. Students who have author visits are much more likely to engage in activities in the library, borrow more books and be more creative (National Literacy Trust, 2019). I run yearly ComiCon events on a Saturday in the school library. The event usually involves a guest comic book illustrator, food and lots of games and activities. They are a lot of fun and ensure our students become library users for the majority of their school career.

Our board game club involves different board games in the library at Friday lunchtime with 60 to 80 students involved. It gives students ownership over the space, boosting their confidence and giving them freedom to make mistakes in a safe environment. We have a board game team of 13-year-old students who make their own games and play-test them on different students. They spend hours in the library during their free time to research, write and develop games.

‘Our board game club involves … gives students ownership over the library space, boosting their confidence and giving them freedom to make mistakes in a safe environment.’

Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer clubs are also extremely popular, bringing in students from all year groups. Based on our experience of running these clubs, we feel that these games not only help youth become better leaders, they develop creativity, management skills and empathy. They provide an opportunity for social connection (Escalante, 2024) and strong friendship groups have developed. This translates into books borrowed and traffic throughout the library. I’m hoping the students that access the library and these programmes look back fondly on their time there. As Webber et al. (2024) have highlighted, the role of the school library in pupils’ wellbeing is often overlooked. It’s important because even if students have not had a good experience at school, I want them to see that the library was a place they were always welcome and where they could be themselves without fear of judgment or ridicule. I think that’s one of the best things about the school library, it is an oasis, a sea of calm in what can often be a very overwhelming and unpredictable place and time for many young people (Merga, 2020; Scottish Book Trust, 2024).

References

Escalante, A. (2024, July 24). Playing Dungeons & Dragons is great for social development. Forbes.

Merga, M. (2020). How Can School Libraries Support Student Wellbeing? Evidence and Implications for Further Research. Journal of Library Administration, 60(6), 660–673.

National Literacy Trust. (2019). Writer visits and children and young people’s literacy engagement.

National Literacy Trust. (2025). Children and young people’s reading in 2025.

Scottish Book Trust. (2024, May 22). Beyond books: School libraries as sources of safety, inclusivity, and wellbeing.

Webber, C., Bohan, K., Collins, H., Ewens, J., Wilkinson, K., & McGeown, S. (2024). Beyond books: High school librarians as champions of pupil inclusivity, autonomy, and reader development. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 57(3), 674–686.