nowadays enhancing critical thinking in learners is considered one of the foreign language teachers’ tasks due to its high position in foreign language classrooms. when it comes to selecting materials for language classrooms, there are obviously some criteria that teachers should apply. the present study aimed at a critical thinking based analysis of ten picture story books and ten folktales that can be used as reading materials in efl/esl context. comparing these two categories of books provides language teachers and educators with the riches of these books. this research is a descriptive study that is done by qualitative deductive content analysis working with prior formulated, theoretically derived aspects of analysis, bringing them in connection with the text. also, it preserves the advantages of quantitative content analysis. therefore, for the analysis of data and representation of tables and diagrams and the comparison between texts, this research makes use of quantitative instruments for its evaluation scheme; likert scale and methods of descriptive statistics such as calculating frequencies and percentages. the results revealed that picture story books had more conformity with critical thinking concepts. among picture story books the story of the lost thing written by shaun tan proved to be in a much better condition and among folktales the story of cap o rushes proved more promising in possessing critical thinking skills. in both picture story books and folktales the three components of information, question and implications and consequences were in a stronger status as compared to other skills. therefore, when it comes to teaching english to young learners through storytelling, this research can suggest appropriate books to enhance critical thinking along with language learning motivation. also, storytellers in pre elementary and elementary schools can select more suitable texts by taking the presented criteria into consideration. ?