To provide the most effective instruction, materials, and support for beginning readers, teachers need to know if young children are more likely to process from print to meaning-- bottom-up or text-driven processing--or to interpret print to follow meaning--top-down or concept-driven processing. While some studies reveal a correlation between beginning reading instruction and reading strategies used by students, others indicate that, irrespective of the strategies taught, good readers combine top-down and bottom-up processing. In a case study focusing on reading development, a four-year-old child learned to read from the words and meaning in her own repertoire. Miscue analysis of her tape-recorded reading of basal texts showed that she was processing unfamiliar texts using an effective interaction of concept-driven and text-driven strategies. The study suggested that if children are too dependent either on expectations they bring to the text or on print as the sole source of meaning, they will be poorly equipped to handle the complexities of unfamiliar passages. Teachers therefore need to make children aware of the different reading strategies available to them. (MM)