Morphological awareness, i.e., the ability to consciously manipulate roots (e.g., HEALTH ) and affixes (e.g., -Y as in HEALTHY ), is a key skill for literacy development. While its role is well documented from Grade 3 onward, its early contribution to reading and spelling acquisition remains unclear, especially in French. This study investigates whether morphological awareness predicts early reading and spelling, particularly for derived and inconsistent words, from Grade 1. We used an accelerated longitudinal design with two cohorts of French-speaking children ( N = 291): one from Grade 1 to 2 and the other from Grade 2 to 3. An autoregressive structural equation model (SEM) was used to examine the predictive role of morphological awareness on later literacy outcomes, controlling for phonological skills, vocabulary, and non-verbal reasoning. Morphological awareness significantly predicted general reading and spelling abilities, and specifically the spelling of derived words, but not their reading. These effects were stronger in the younger cohort (Grade 1 to 2) due to the lesser effect of the autoregressive path. Morphological awareness plays a unique role in early literacy, particularly in spelling morphologically complex words. Findings are discussed in light of French orthographic consistency and current models of literacy acquisition.