A young child picks up a book, holds it right side up, and turns the pages. These activities demonstrate:

The correct answer is emergent literacy skills.

Explanation:
Emergent literacy skills refer to the early behaviors, skills, and conceptual understandings that children develop before they formally learn to read and write. These foundational skills are typically acquired in early childhood through exposure to books, language, and print in their environment.

When a young child picks up a book, holds it right side up, and turns the pages, they are demonstrating print awareness and book-handling behaviors. These actions show that the child understands that books have a specific orientation, contain content, and are read page-by-page from front to back. Because these behaviors precede formal reading but are essential developmental milestones toward literacy, they are classified as emergent literacy skills.