The Secret World of Kids [*SIGNED*]

[New York]: Bernard Geis Associates. Very Good+ in Very Good+ dj. (c.1959). First Edition. Hardcover. [modest bumping to top corners, otherwise just minimally shelfworn; jacket lightly edgeworn, a touch of light staining along top edge of front panel]. (pen and ink drawings) INSCRIBED by the author on the front endpaper: "To ______ / best wishes / Art Linkletter." One-time TV star Linkletter, who got a ton of mileage out of getting kids to say "the darndest things" on his long-running daytime show, here "gives his own secret formula for family fun and family unity," based on his belief "that kids were made to be a constant source of joy and wonder, but that many parents unknowingly block themselves from one of life's happiest pleasures, the sheer enjoyment of their children. In this book, with gaiety and good humor and good sense, he sets out to break down the barriers between the weary world of adults and the secret world of kids." He puts forward his own family -- including a rear-jacket photo of him, his wife, and their give kids (plus one spouse and one grandchild) -- as proof that he knows what he's talking about; alas, three of the five would predecease their parents -- most notably his youngest daughter Diane ("she of the quick-silver moods of gaiety and pensiveness"), who died in 1969 after jumping out of a sixth-floor window. (Her death was attributed by her father to drug use, and he reacted by becoming a bit of an anti-drug crusader.) Signed by Author .