The development of children is an important thing to be considered. Mostly parents and teacher focus on developing children's cognitive abilities such as the ability to recognize numbers, symbols of numbers and numeracy, while language skills are often abandoned. Necessarily, the ability of children in emergent literacy is very important to be introduced from an early age. This study aimed to determine the ability of children to literacy skill through the use of picture book at aged 4-5 years. The research subjects consisted of two kindergartens in Yogyakarta Indonesia. The data used in this study was quasi-experiment. In the experimental group used the picture book while in the control group used conventional methods. The data collection used observation sheets. The collected research data were analyzed using t-test through the SPSS program 16 to see the differences between the experimental and control groups. The conclusion of this research was a significant difference in using picture books on emergent literacy in preschool children. The recommendation from the result of this research was provided to parents, teachers, academics, surrounding environment of the children particularly to develop children's communication skill and practitioner in the discussion that especially emphasized addressing the need to increase opportunities for emergent literacy of preschool children in good stimulation.