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Reading is a crucial cognitive ability that is acquired via instruction, typically at the beginning of primary school, between 5 and 7 years old, depending on cultural and educational practices. This timing is traditionally justified by the belief that the brain is not developmentally ready for this ability before this age, partly due to the delayed specialization of neural structures for processing letters and letter strings. However, recent findings investigating early exposure to literacy challenge this notion and indicated a benefit of early exposure to letters for later reading skills. Nowadays, emergent literacy is particularly influenced by home literacy habits and 2-3-year-old toddlers can recognize letters and words, depending upon parental involvement. Thus, the question of how literacy exactly emerges before school and changes brain activity remains open. In this project, we therefore pose the provocative question of whether toddlers, at the age of 3, have brains that are developmentally ready for the foundational acquisition of reading. First, we will use an original approach combining Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation (FPVS) with EEG (ElectroEncephaloGraphy) recordings to measure implicitly and rapidly the brain’s early sensitivity to letter stimuli and we will relate it to letter experience. This paradigm allows to identify differential neural responses between two categories of stimuli (e.g., letter-like vs real letters) during passive viewing of images displayed at a fast periodic rate (in 5-year-old children, at 6Hz) and where deviant stimuli (e.g., letters) are periodically inserted among base stimuli (e.g., letter-like stimuli). These responses occur only if the two categories are neurally discriminated, and display a topography related to the left posterior brain structures involved in this process. Second, given the prevailing view that the neural basis for reading develops at the expense of other visual categories, such as faces, we will also investigate face recognition ability and neural responses to faces in these young children. The outcomes of this research will have significant implications both for theorical and practical domains, by providing a novel framework for understanding the interplay between neural plasticity, cognitive development, and impact of home literacy habits for learning to read. Depending on outcomes, this research program could also benefit educational practices such as introducing early exposure to written language, and therefore help to prevent potential reading difficulties for children at risk.