We examined the concurrent validity of the Preschool Early Literacy Indicators (PELI®) with 105 New Zealand (NZ) five-year-old children entering primary school. PELI® incorporates oral language and emergent literacy tasks into a picture-book that is administered as a shared adult-child read-aloud activity. In this study, PELI® administration and scoring was adapted to NZ English. Correlations and hierarchical linear regression analyses were conducted to assess the correspondence of PELI®[superscript NZ] tasks with criterion measures assessing related constructs (oral language: Clinical Evaluations of Language Fundamentals-Preschool Second Edition, Australia & New Zealand Standardized Edition; alphabet knowledge: Letter Naming Fluency). Diagnostic accuracy of the PELI®[superscript NZ] language index composite and phonological awareness scores was evaluated using logistic regression and area under the curve (ROC). Results supported concurrent validity of the PELI®[superscript NZ] in this NZ sample. Future research should evaluate whether children's performance on PELI®[superscript NZ] at school entry predicts later progress in literacy acquisition.