Two hundred years ago luboks with fairy and humorous pictures were interesting to children, some characters of those pictures were remembered for the whole life. In many countries children began to get some knowledge of art from ABC books. In 1814 M. Terebenev, a son of a famous Russian caricaturist, illustrated an ABC book " Gift for Russian Children to Remember the War of 1812" with anti-French caricatures. Later V. Timm, a publisher of "Beau-monde Leaflet", was the first who began to publish illustrated children's books. At the same time E. Kovrigin drew funny vignettes and letters for children's anthologies. A. Benois illustrated "ABC" with fantastic and humorous pictures; wonderful illustrations for Russian fairy tales were drawn by I. Bilibin. The artists of the "World of Art" movement started to illustrate children's books with kind humour. (see G. Narbut's illustrations to Krilov's fables.) Such great foreign illustrators as J. Granville ("Robinson Crusoe", "Gulliver's Traels", G. Dore ("Gargantua and Pantagruel"), E. Lear, and some others influenced the creative work of Russian artists.

After October, 1917, M. Dobuzhinsky was the first to illustrate books for children ("Three Fat Men" by Y. Olesha). Caricaturists were also involved into illustrating of the Children Library series issued by "Begemot" publishers in 1920s.

In 1930s B. Malakhovsky brilliantly illustrated "Pinoccio"; V. Konashevich's drawings to K. Chukovsky's books have become classics of illustration; V. Lebedev used artistic devices of lubok and poster in his work; children's books were illustrated by B. Antonovsky, A. Uspensky, N. Radlov, A. Kanevsky, and A. Radakov.