A study examined whether storybook exposure and the amount of teaching in reading and writing skills provided by parents would enhance the language skills and emergent literacy of 47 first-grade children. Hierarchical regression analyses that controlled for parents' print exposure, and children's age and analytical intelligence showed that at the beginning of grade 1, storybook exposure explained significant unique variance in children's language skills but not in their emergent literacy, whereas parent teaching explained significant unique variance in children's emergent literacy but not in their language skills. Findings suggest that storybook exposure may have a direct impact on children's language skills whereas additional support in the form of teaching is necessary to enhance emergent literacy. At the end of grade 1, children's language and emergent literacy performance accounted for 20% of the variance in word reading, but storybook exposure and parent teaching did not account for additional significant unique variance. Findings suggest that the long term influence of early home literacy experiences is mediated through children's language skills and emergent literacy. (Contains three tables of data and two figures which illustrate frameworks of relations between home literacy experiences and child outcomes. An appendix contains a list of the four child measures used.) (Author/RS)