This book presents a case study that documents the linguistic development of three trilingual children. With a Swedish father and a Portuguese mother, the children have been exposed to these two languages in addition to English, which has been encountered through school and a variety of social settings. Although the interaction of the development of all three languages is inevitable, this volume mainly focuses on the children’s development of Portuguese. As Cruz-Ferreira states in the preview, this text does not attempt to offer a full account of the children’s linguistic development but instead provides insight into the everyday use of the children’s language and the linguistic strategies and choices that they make for the first 10 years of their lives.

The volume is divided into three main parts: Part 1, “Becoming Multilingual,” Part 2, “Making Sense of Portuguese,” and Part 3, “Acquiring a Third Language.” Part 1 includes themes with regard to issues in bilingualism and bilingual language acquisition, a description of the children as participants in this study, the data collection and analysis process, and ideas that surround speaking and talking about different languages. Part 2 deals with the children’s production of Portuguese, including themes of phonology, linguistic structure, and semantics of both words and phrases. Part 3 deals with bilinguals acquiring a third language. The ideas presented in this final section of the book include the concept of language input and the management of all of the languages, the delicate balance of culture and identity, and the question of whether this new language intrudes on the already existing language or if it is a welcome addition.

Cruz-Ferreira’s data collection process and presentation is thorough and clearly presented; the data can be understood even by those who are not familiar with the three languages in question. Throughout the book, Cruz-Ferreira provides detailed transcripts, many times also including phonetic transcriptions, to give the readers insights to the data analyzed. Cruz-Ferreira addresses the children’s language acquisition process from a variety of angles, including pronunciation (and intonation), the lexicon, reasons for learning new languages (communication purposes or for school), a variety of attitudes (of both adults and children) toward these three participants’ multilingual status, and the social implications (of which the children are immensely aware) of language choice, among other issues. Because this volume covers wide-ranging topics, it could be used for a variety of SLA courses, with the most obvious choice of a course in child SLA or child multilingualism. However, there are also sections that could be used in other courses: Chapter 2 is a clear explanation of the current bilingual and multilingual research and could be used in a course as an overview, and chapters 10 and 11 (along with parts of other chapters) would be ideal for a course on the social context of language learning. The entire volume would also be invaluable in a course on qualitative research methods.

Although the majority of the world’s population is bilingual or multilingual, the study of multilinguals as a source of interest is a relatively new concept in the field of SLA; many of the earlier studies have lumped the multilingual participants into the same category as the bilingual participants. The reality is that the process of becoming multilingual differs from that of being bilingual, and it is the multilingual process that is more difficult to understand because of the complex interaction among the languages in question. Cruz-Ferreira does not make an attempt to compare her participants with their monolingual or even bilingual counterparts—this would be a comparison of different processes—nor does she attempt to make sweeping generalizations about all multilingual children. What she does successfully do is answer the question in the title of this volume: Three is a crowd? This question is asked by parents and educators alike, and the answer is a resounding no.