The University of Maryland will explore nontraditional literacy practices in families and their relation to emerging literacy in preschool children from low-income backgrounds. Four sets of factors will be examined, including child characteristics, parental characteristics, parent-child interactions, and environmental factors. One hundred and ten African American children attending a Head Start program in Washington, DC will be assessed to determine their level of literacy, language functioning abilities, and level of participation in traditional and nontraditional literacy-related behaviors. In addition, the children's primary caregivers will participate in a home interview addressing their literacy level, nontraditional and traditional literacy related behaviors, and parenting factors. Home and environmental characteristics related to literacy will also be observed. Finally, caregivers and children will participate in an interactional activity, which will be coded for its display of literacy behaviors. Potential benefits of this project include documentation of traditional and nontraditional factors in African American Head Start families that support literacy development and use of the data to develop family literacy programs for this population.