The author investigates the ideal child images as they are reflected through the elementary textbooks’ covers in the Late Soviet and Post Soviet periods in Russia. One can see the history of childhood ‘icons’ constructed both for pupils and adults. Four periods of such history are the following: early 1980s (romantic Soviet childhood), late 1980s (monumental Soviet childhood), the 1990s (traditional folk childhood), and the 2000s (knowing childhood for globality).