Join RBSC for a “Wild Ride”!

With the closure of UBC Library due to the quickly evolving situation with COVID-19, we apologize that this wonderful exhibition will not be open to the public in the coming weeks. Please enjoy these photos of the exhibition, which were taken by the talented student curators. A complete catalogue of the exhibition can be downloaded here.


Rare Books and Special Collections at UBC Library is delighted to announce a new exhibition: The Wild Ride: In and Out of Years and Over a Century of Picturebooks.

Many thanks to guest bloggers Logaine Navasques, Maureen Duteau, Jacqueline Noel, and Jordyn Zirk for contributing the below post! Logaine and Maureen, graduate students in the Master of Arts in Children’s Literature Program, and Jacqueline and Jordyn, graduate students at the UBC School of Information, curated this magical new exhibition under the supervision of Dr. Kathryn Shoemaker, Adjunct Professor with the UBC School of Information.

The Wild Ride: In and Out of Years and Over a Century of Picturebooks is a chronological look at the evolution of the picturebook, one of the important literary art forms to emerge from the 20th Century. The exhibit features ground breaking, innovative books such as Millions of Cats, Madeline, Where the Wild Things Are,  The Very Hungry Caterpillar, I Want My Hat Back and other brilliant picturebooks responsible for forging a literary art form that reflects the culture of its time and is becoming a vital form in promoting visual and print literacy for all ages.  

The literary picturebook is a new literary art form that emerges in the 20th century, evolving from the  illustrated children’s book. It evolves concurrently with two other relatively new visual sequential narrative forms, comic/graphic novels and animated films. The three forms influence each other as they develop principally because so many of the creators worked in all three forms. This exhibit highlights key books in this evolution revealing how each changed the nature and content of the picturebook form.

The Wild Ride: In and Out of Years and Over a Century of Picturebooks is on display from March 4 through May 30, 2020. The exhibition is free and open to the public, and people of all ages are encouraged to attend. A complete catalogue of the exhibition can be downloaded here. For more information, please contact Rare Books and Special Collections at (604) 822-2521 or rare.books@ubc.ca.