On reading the title of this volume, the reader might assume that the study involves teenagers in a large urban area of the United States. Potential readers will be surprised to realize that this book is about Hispanic teenagers in Sydney, Australia, and the efforts of these teens and their families to maintain their Spanish language. The authors, Gibbons and Ramirez, argue that the understanding of minority language maintenance and shift “requires the examination of the degree of acquisition of various elements of proficiency, including spoken language, basic literacy skills, grammar and high register” (p. l). Thus, having set a rather rigorous benchmark for themselves, they proceed to study 106 Hispanic teenagers to determine the degree of maintenance of Spanish among them as well as their attitudes toward their bilingualism.

The book begins with a broad overview of bilingual maintenance issues and research. In its eight chapters, the authors explore definitions and measurement of bilingual proficiency as well as factors that might influence bilingual development and maintenance, such as sociocultural and demographic factors, interpersonal interaction, media and education, biliteracy, and attitudes and beliefs about bilingualism. The authors conclude with their judgments on methodology for research on language maintenance processes and implications, to which they add recommendations for bilingual maintenance in minority communities. One strength of the book is that each chapter provides an overview of the issues and findings of other researchers and then explains how the authors investigated those same issues in the Sydney community. The reader is thereby able to judge the authors' contributions to the principal literature on the topic as they critique the research of others.

The Sydney Hispanic community researched here is a medium-sized community that would be considered middle class by American standards. One positive feature of the book is the use of multiple sources for data collection. The authors provide census data as a way to examine the role of society in language maintenance, but most of the data comes from their interviews with 106 Hispanic teenagers, ages 12 to 16, in their homes and with their caregivers. The interviews included broad, open-ended questions on language, their lives, and their identities as well as more specific questions about their language use. The teenagers also completed a questionnaire with some fixed choice options. Proficiency was analyzed through self-evaluation in addition to analysis of the free conversation portion of the interviews and language tests. A valuable feature of the research was the use of some of the measures of language proficiency with a comparison group of Spanish native speakers in Chile, the country that provides the largest number of Hispanic immigrants to Australia. This comparison showed that nearly half of the Australian group performed near the monolingual standards of Chile.

This book presents a great deal of information about many of the issues that educators, linguists, and policy-makers would consider of interest in the area of language maintenance and shift. By examining not only oral language but biliteracy as well, it provides a variety of ways that researchers can examine these issues in other studies and with other language communities. One fascinating feature of the study is the analysis of sample lessons from natural and social science textbooks used in Argentina and Uruguay schools as a way to examine Spanish academic register. The authors use examples from these texts to demonstrate the features of this academic register. Such features would pose challenges for the biliteracy development of students who do not receive literacy instruction in their native language beyond a basic level, which is the case for many bilinguals in Australia who do not have access to bilingual education.

One shortcoming of the book is that it contains over 100 charts or graphs, some of which involve statistical analysis of the data. At times, the charts and explanations might become overwhelming for the reader who is not very sophisticated in statistical analysis. Many of these charts could be relegated to an appendix. However, for the reader who values quantitative data analysis, the charts provide broader documentation for the authors' claims.

The authors conclude that it is possible to maintain a high level of proficiency in a minority language and that the family plays a major role, especially in the absence of institutional support for such language maintenance. Positive attitudes toward bilingualism are an important factor, including resistance to the hegemony of English among Spanish speakers. The educational arena is nevertheless the most important institutional variable in minority language maintenance, which is problematic in Australia, where Spanish/English bilingual education is not offered. Proficiency in conversational language might affect the development of biliteracy, but the factors that affect bilingual proficiency are quite numerous and complex. Quantitative and qualitative research approaches might provide guidance to other researchers who want to engage in related research on these factors.