How do families who are trying to raise their children bilingually attempt to do so, and how do they overcome some of the challenges of this decision? This is the main theme of this very readable book, which is written with a variety of audiences in mind. The book is theoretically sound even though it is not primarily addressed to the research community. The author, who has had personal experience raising children bilingually, also documents the experiences of many other families involved in this endeavor, using direct quotes from interviews and small case studies of these families as documentation for the theoretical assertions.

The book is based on a study carried out in 2001 with families from 21 different countries who completed a questionnaire about the one-parent–one-language (OPOL) approach (93 couples and 156 children). Most of the parents had children who were either preschool age or in primary school. Additionally, the author interviewed 30 families that represented a variety of languages and cultural situations and developed case studies to document their strategies for more in-depth examples of their bilingual reality and parenting.

The book consists of eight chapters, starting with an important review of the theoretical basis for the OPOL approach. The author not only reviews the work of well-known linguists who have published child case studies in this area (Grammont, Ronjat, Leopold, Romaine, Dopke, and others) but also quotes from her survey of nearly 100 families to explain their understanding of the OPOL approach. Additionally, she includes the concerns of researchers, parents, and the general public about the challenges of raising children bilingually and tries to address these concerns in the subsequent chapters.

Chapter 2 focuses on the first 3 years of the child's life and the emerging languages in his or her repertoire, including emerging patterns of use with each of the parents. Chapter 3 focuses on school-age children and the influence of the peer group, the group that perhaps poses the greatest challenge to the continued development of bilingualism in the child. Recognizing this challenge, the author considers the importance of the cultural input beyond the linguistic input for the child's language appreciation.

Chapter 4 focuses on the extended family, siblings, grandparents, and other family members. The author presents examples of the value of extended family as a resource for bilingual development and enhancement of skills, especially because relatives can provide monolingual models of language behavior. Nevertheless, she acknowledges situations in which extended family members might not appreciate the child's use of the language of the “foreign” parent and discusses how bilingual families have attempted to address those situations.

Chapter 5 addresses issues faced by trilingual and multilingual families to show how they deal with three or more languages with their children. This is an especially fascinating chapter because much previous research on child bilingualism addresses only two languages—not three or more—in the children's repertoire.

Chapter 6 addresses the issue of parental attitudes, a critical aspect of positive bilingual development. It also examines a variety of problem areas such as speech problems, family separation or divorce, and isolation that some bilingual families might experience in the community in which they live.

Chapter 7 focuses on parental strategies, including those of families that do not adhere to an OPOL approach for a variety of reasons, perhaps depending on country of residence or parents' language proficiency. Chapter 8 provides recommendations for parents that acknowledge changes in parenting styles and social circumstances that might make the OPOL approach inappropriate or insufficient.

The book presents a well-developed and well-documented position on the OPOL approach. However, one shortcoming is that the questionnaires and responses were only in English, thus giving more prominence to parents who had access to that language. Moreover, the book focuses on middle-class families with opportunities to travel and to provide private schooling and bilingual caregivers to extend their children's bilingual development. The book does not address the reality of families whose children are growing up bilingually not because the parents themselves are bilingual, but because the society uses a language other than the home language. That is obviously a different study and will need to be undertaken by a different researcher. This book, however, can provide guidance to the researchers who might want to tell that story.