Bilingual Parenting presents a wonderful introduction for expecting parents to explore the positives of raising their child bilingual. As a first time mom in a bicultural relationship, I want my children to be raised bilingual, however have been nervous given I only speak English while my husband speaks English and Spanish.

After reading Bilingual Parenting, I feel more empowered to cultivate bilingualism within my home.

Bilingual Parenting presents many anecdotes the author has seen, both within her own family (French/English) or those she has come across – utilizing humorous stories to showcase the importance of early language introduction. Make note that there isn’t much science or research backing the authors claims, as she is pulling from personal experience.

I felt this guide lacked depth and information for the parent who only speaks one language, as the author and her spouse both speak 2 languages fluently. The concept of “one parent, one language” is extremely more difficult when the mother or main caregiver does not speak the minority language (as in my case). I acknowledge that this is a specific request, but I feel this guide could have been improved with more of this perspective to appeal to the American audience.

Thank you NetGalley and Troubador publishing for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The author's personal perspective and successful history of maintaining a bilingual household shines through this book, but unfortunately it does not offer anything new beyond anecdotal evidence of the author's family. I expected more research and information. The advice was quite obvious or focused on proving that bilingualism is good: perhaps I am not a target audience of this book since I've never believed or even heard any negative stereotypes about it and already believed it's good. I paid attention to footnotes and sources, but they seemed to come from very few books and websites, giving a limited perspective. The book is also very short but at the same time I found myself skipping some sections that pertained to the author's personal experience.

Thank you to NetGalley, publishers and Nicky Gentil for the early access edition.

The book Bilingual Parenting by Nicky Gentil is a guide on what to do and not to do when raising a child to be bilingual. Nicky herself has experience after raising her 2 children and interviewing many others. Originally from the UK, Nicky moved to France and became fluent.

I picked this book up because I was curious with what I would find inside. Having been born in Lithuania and moved to the UK at the age of 6. My native language was Lithuanian however, I would no longer call it that and say I am more elementary proficient. I can have a conversation but not very well. So, it was interesting to read some reasons as to why this took place for me and how I could make sure the same doesn't happen to my children if I were to raise them bilingual.

I enjoyed the book and thought it was well written. It wasn't very long and did bring some interesting anecdotes. However, I would say this is much more a memoir and book of anecdotes then a practical guide. I think that as a memoir on bilingual parenting there is a lot that can be taken away but I would expect a guide to come with a lot more research and backing rather than anecdotes.

Overall, this was a good read and I would recommend others to read it who are curious about their own bilingualism or who are considering raising their children as such. Happy to read that there is still hope for my Lithuanian skills!

Thank you netgalley for the drc.

A short overview on the benefits of raising bilingual children and how to or not to do it.

There any many short antedocs from real people to explain the lessons listed in the book. I found it very compelling and easy to understand how it works in practice, rather than it being a vague theory that I have to imagine on my own.

As someone who is monolingual but had a bilingual partner, this is a concept I’ve considered for some time. I would suggest this to anyone who is considering raising bilingual children, and to do so before having them. But better late than never if you already have them!

I can see myself refering back to this book in the future when I face specific problems and need a little advice of how to approach it.

This book, while helpful, could have been so much better.
My mom is from Chile, my dad was French, and I was born and raised in the USA. So I am an early native trilingual speaker, and I was curious what this book had to say.

Nicky Gentil begins the book with a remarkable fact: about half the world is bilingual.
This brings up 2 issues:

1) If it's so prevalent, why does she dedicate part of the book to defending bilingualism? Bilinguism is not weird. She should have dispatched bilingual critics more succinctly and not worried about them.

2) Because "there is nothing particularly rare or exotic about being bilingual" (the book's first sentence), why didn't Gentil devote a chapter or two to polyglots?

This book is more of a memoir than a statistical survey or a how-to book.

My brother and I are early trilingual, and we both didn't start speaking until we were about 3 years old, somewhat late.

Gentil quoted a pediatrician, who quoted someone else, who said:
"Bilingual children do not systematically take longer to learn to speak than monolingual children. However, when a bilingual child is slow to learn to speak, the medical view is that there is absolutely no cause for concern."

I didn't understand why Gentil was so proud of her bilingual children when 50% of children are bilingual. It's nothing special.

Raising bilingual kids is easy. As Gentil states, "The distinct separation of the two languages is the main key to a successful bilingual education."
That's all you need to know.

I wanted to hear more challenging cases, such as:

a) What if you're a single parent? Presumably, the lone parent would speak whatever language is NOT spoken in the region they live in.

b) But what if you only speak English, you live in Texas, and you want your child to be bilingual, but you can't afford a bilingual school?

c) What if you want your child to be trilingual or quadrilingual?

For example, here's a hypothetical scenario: I am fluent in French, Spanish, and English, and my wife speaks Japanese. Let's say we want our children to speak all 4 languages. How do we do that? Now, that's an interesting case study!

The answer, according to my research, is:

- Mom speaks to the child exclusively in Japanese
- I speak to the child in French during the first half of the day and Spanish in the second half.
- Mom & Dad speak to each other in their common language, English

That way, the child absorbs all 4 languages. I didn't learn this from Gentil's book, but it would have been useful if she had a chapter on raising polyglots.

Unfortunately, this book focuses on boring bilingualism.
Yes, I should have known better: the title says so.
Still, I had hoped she would have devoted a few pages to tackling challenging cases.
That's when we need a true expert.

The book is short: I read it in one night.

It's a useful book, but Gentil missed an opportunity to make it more interesting.

I hope to interview Gentil on my podcast to learn what she has to say about situations she didn't cover in the book.

RESPONSE FROM GENTIL

Gentil declined to participate in my podcast, but she wrote this email to me, defending her book and critiquing my review. In fairness, I'll share it so you, the potential reader, can decide. For those on the fence, download a free sample of the book on Amazon and then make the final call. Here's what she wrote to me:

For example : « This book is more of a memoir ». If that is the case, why do I back up my assertions with references to leading language experts, neurologists, articles, books etc., not to mention the countless case studies quoted – the results of my interviewing numerous bilingual, trilingual, and multilingual families when I was researching the subject. Surely a memoir would have been purely autobiographical?

You say I fail to mention polyglots. This is untrue. I clearly make the point that my recommendations apply not just to bilinguals, but also trilinguals, multi-linguals etc. The principles are exactly the same, however many languages involved.

You trivialize a very important point by saying: « Gentil quoted a pediatrician, who quoted someone else, who said: ». I actually refer to one of Rome’s leading pediatricians of the time, not just « someone else ». I chose to include this doctor’s invaluable piece of advice because monolingual parents, who are faced with bilingual / trilingual / multilingual parenting and therefore have no personal experience to rely on, generally need reassuring when it comes to how long it will take their child to learn to speak.

I agree that the distinct separation of the languages should be obvious. However, as I clearly state in the the book, I cannot insist on this basic principle enough because, over the years, I have observed too many parents speaking a mix of languages to their children, more often than not with catastrophic results.

Regarding your point: « But what if you only speak English, you live in Texas, and you want your child to be bilingual, but you can't afford a bilingual school? », I give plenty of advice as to how to raise children bilingually on a budget in the final chapter when I explain what I say to French parents who wish their children to become fluent in English from an early age. Again, this advice can easily be applied to any language. It hardly takes a leap of faith to do so!

Finally, since approximately half the world is bilingual , this still leaves – at current estimates – over 4 billion people who aren’t! My book is, I believe, a useful tool (exactly what it sets out to be, it never claims to be a « statistical survey ») for this category of people which includes many who require practical advice because they grew up as monolinguals and their circumstances lead them to parenting with more than one language.

I understand that you take your multilingual background for granted because you have never known anything else. However, it would seem that this has caused you to be dismissive and misleading about many elements of my book. Maybe, because you already know so much on the subject, you merely scan-read it, hence the numerous inaccuracies in your review?

- Nicky Gentil

If you are bilingual, parent a bilingual (or multilingual) child, or have negative perceptions around being bilingual such as firstly, not believing that it is possible, or assuming it equals to a deficit in either or both languages, read this book.

Gentil's book is a combination of scientific findings, anecdotes and essays on bilingualism. The parenting aspect makes this book much needed and important.