ABSTRACT
Young children start reading worlds much earlier than they read words. They read faces, author relationships, and communicate through coos, babbles, and cries. As young children recognize the faces of their parents or other caregivers, they identify and may start moving toward the source of nourishment before they read printed words. Infants often move from extralinguistic interactions to coos and babbles, after which childrens may start communicating through semblances of words, through approximations. Young children develop as readers, writers, and speakers because reading, writing, and talking serve a sociofunctional purpose: to communicate. To understand the children are born literate, it is important to reconceptualize literacy in their terms, moving away from seeing vocabulary, phonological awareness and sensitivity, and print knowledge as requisite pieces of the early literacy puzzle. Creating spaces for children to experience literacy education that has connections to their own languages, while providing access to the language of power is an often ignored imperative.
