From the 1870s onwards, children’s drawings started to be systematically collected and analyzed by child psychologists to study the child’s mental growth process. Drawing as an instrument to study the child’s mind soon created an equivalence between what the child was (the drawings mirroring her mental processes) and what she should become. By the end of the 19th century, Corrado Ricci, in Italy, collected more than one thousand drawings.

During the century XVII, in the European Enlightenment, the search and application of new mathematical methods to describe the world and the universe, changed not only our perception of nature but also the perception of the human being and his capacities. The *calculus* appears as a mathematical method to describe physical activity. In an age full of ambiguities and contradictions, divine power and creation dissipate in human hands.

First published in 1875/6 in Switzerland, Johannes Staub’s picture book series A instrucção da creança was translated and published in Portugal in 1904/5. Staub was a teacher and author, committed to progressive and reform education. His picture book series was thought as part of the pedagogical method of the object lesson.