Abstract: The paper presents the theoretical findings regarding children's critical reading skills. The articlecle also presents the Four Resources Model (Peter Freebody, Allan Luke) as a proposal to work with the text as part of critical literacy. Referring to the results of international research on progress in reading PIRLS, it reveals dilemmas related to the teaching of critical reading of the youngest recipients of literary content. Material and methods: The article uses the analysis of documents concerning the level of reading skills, learning critical reading and the four resources model four resources Results: The text presents the results of international PIRLS 2016 reading progress research and the theoretical findings regarding the critical reading model by Freebody and Luke. Conclusions: Today's education can not ignore the critical literacy of children who are recipients of not only verbal but also (and perhaps above all) visual content