This article describes the initial stage of Billiken magazine, founded in 1919, and its strategy for capturing the children’s market as part of a project of the “Editorial Atlántida de Constancia C. Vigil” to separate the reading public (male, female, children). The most notable elements of this strategy were the graphic quality of the magazine, particularly the photographs and illustrations, the diversity of the topics and genres covered, and the ability to adapt topics that once seemed appropriate only for adult publications to a children’s format. While books often presented heroes to be admired and imitated, Billiken published pleasant stories of an adventurous nature that offered “condensed general culture”—something that the schools were supposed to, but did not automatically do—in a format conducive to easy reading.