Knowing how to handle, understand and build meanings from images is a paramount task for readers in contemporary society, as it is immersed in multimodality. However, in opposition to written culture, there are no specific teaching mechanisms for reader s visual education at schools. Acknowledging that most literature books for children and young people find a conducive environment for poetry and fiction fruition in the verbal-visual relationship, this research aims to stablish a connection between Design, present in literature books for children and young people sealed by public policies, and the process of reader s visual education. For that, we conducted a graphic analysis of literary books selected by Programa Nacional Biblioteca da Escola (PNBE) and organized an overview of their graphic complexity progression, relating the graphic aspects they present to reader s school development in pre-, elementary, middle and high school. In this process, we were able to perceive that, although the collections comprised books whose projects were consisted with the concept of Design in Reading, they did not present a progression of visual complexity. On the contrary, as young readers advanced on their schooling and understanding of textual content, graphic and image content tended to reduce in number and to become simpler. Thus, this research proposes interventions for changing this scenario based on actions targeted at reading mediators, among them, designers themselves. This would enable children and young people to become empowered readers in verbal-visual meaning-making and reach the condition of critical individuals and transformation agents in the ideological social systems that surround them.