In this article, we report on the results of a critical literacy project on fairy tales, which was implemented with a class of first graders (6-7 years old) in Greece in the context of teaching Greek as a mother tongue. As a teaching approach, critical literacy entails a radical change in the school culture, being at odds with the Greek educational reality at the moment. In consideration of the controversies of the Greek educational context, we decided to adopt critical language awareness, which proposes the use of critical discourse analysis for teaching purposes. Therefore, through this approach, we explore to what extent young children may be transformed into 'critical language researchers', by delving into the textual mechanisms of fairy tales for the construction of hegemonic social meanings.