A case study documented the emergence of literacy in an extremely precocious reader between the ages of 2 years, 7 months and 3 years, 2 months. The case study examined the relation between the subject's oral language and reading development; the bases of his word identification; the relation between his reading and writing development; and whether the early development of a precocious reader's language skills shows exceptional strengths in areas found to be deficient in pre-dyslexic children. Data included observations made in the home, standardized test data gathered during the study period, and reports from the subject's mother (who had graduate training in the teaching of reading and encouraged the subject's reading) both before and after the study. Results indicated that: (1) while the subject performed poorly on phonological awareness and other metalinguistic items, his reading and spontaneous language use suggested achievement in at least some kinds of awareness of sounds and patterns within words; (2) the syntactic complexity of the subject's language, his mother's reports, and his ability to integrate both correct and scrambled letter strings were all consistent with the conclusion that the precocious development of phonologically based word identification skill is associated with superior working memory; and (3) the subject's information performance was consistent with group data suggesting only a modest relationship between reading precocity and semantic development. Findings suggest the importance of looking for target skills, not just supposed prerequisites, in evaluating precocious readers. (One figure and one table of data are included; 22 references are attached.) (RS)