ABSTRACT
Those of you whose work or personal lives take you into the world of young children’s early experiences with print will need no convincing that the scratches, letter-like figures, and iconic forms they produce prior to schooling are in fact manifestations of tremendous competence. Some of the rest of us might claim that children go through “stages” of scribble development, but we likely all feel confident in saying that once in school, they will eventually learn to “write” correctly. In this chapter I will provide more evidence to the growing body of literature that demonstrates how children’s paths to literacy begin much earlier than at school age and how these paths are filled with remarkably clever misconceptions about print.
