While a great deal of attention has been directed to the potential value of using symbol systems other than the traditional 26-letter alphabet in the early stages of reading instruction, little attention has been paid to the potential value of using rebuses. In a linguistic sense, rebuses are symbols which represent entire words or parts of words; whereas, by contrast, letters represent sounds. A rebus may be pictorial, geometric, or even completely abstract. To investigate the hypothesis that pupils learning to read with rebuses would do significantly better than pupils presented the same instructional material in traditional orthography (T.O.), two samples of five preschool nonreaders each were exposed to a learning-to-read situation. The results of the study demonstrated that learning to read rebuses was markedly easier than learning to read T.O. Furthermore, the differences became even more disparate as the complexity of the vocabulary and sentences increased. The results implied that learning to read derives its problems and difficulties primarily from the abstract nature of T.O. as a symbol system, not from the nature of the reading process itself. It was suggested that rebuses should be more widely used in beginning reading materials to reduce the learning load on the child. Tables and references are included. (Author/DH)