Award-winning Illustrator, Sonia Leong visited Corby Business Academy to meet our Year 7 students, for many of which, it was their first chance to meet an Illustrator in real life.

Sonia specialises in illustrating Manga books, amongst other things, and as we have a very keen group of Manga enthusiasts amongst our Year 7 cohort, there was a lot of excitement in the lead up to Sonia’s visit. 

Sonia delivered a whole year assembly on the Origins of Manga and the students were enthralled from start to finish as she explained the career journey she had taken to become an Illustrator and was being paid to do her dream job.

Students were able to pose some great questions to Sonia, who gave them some brilliant advice on how to pursue their own goals.

A drawing workshop then followed, delivered to 30 students who had signed up for the event. Sonia went through her drawing process and taught the students how to draw various characters from different perspectives. The students were so engrossed and produced some fantastic drawings, they concentrated so hard and were hanging on Sonia’s every instruction.

Librarian, Mrs Keelan said ‘Manga is by far our most popular genre of books within CBA Library, especially with this year’s cohort of Year 7. I can’t keep these books on the shelves for long, which is a great problem to have! We also run an Anime and Yu-Gi-Oh club in the library after school, so it was a real treat to be able to welcome Sonia and have her visit help to encourage even more reading for pleasure across the Academy. 

The students enjoyed the experience immensely and Sonia’s visit created a real buzz in the Library, with students talking about her visit for days afterwards. It has even led to the creation of a new Manga Drawing after-school club, which is just brilliant.

Here’s what some of our students had to say about the day:

‘Yesterday was absolutely amazing’ James – Year 12`

‘It was extremely interesting and helpful because the tutorials were easy to follow. I loved it.’ Zuzanna – Year 8

'I was enraptured by the activities. They were creative and incredible' Maddie – Year 7