Miss Manners Guide to Rearing Perfect Children by Judith Martin is a 405-page hardcover published by Atheneum New York, first published in 1979, this copy published in 1984.  There are numerous chips and tears long the edges of the dust jacket.  Inside, the only flaw noted is bumping to the bottom spine.  Otherwise, the book is in good condition.

Book Summary

Whether she is discussing playground etiquette or junior proms, how to cope with toddlers' birthday parties or a fiance brought home from college, Miss Manners brings to childrearing the same high-minded hilarity, the same firm insistence on proper behavior, that made her guide to Excruciatingly correct behavior such a well-loved best seller.  

Writing about that book, George Will said "As Plato understood, there is really only one serious political topic.  It is more serious than war, or even the New Federalism.  It is the upbringing of children; all else turns on that."  Now Miss Manners has devoted an entire book to the subject of civilizing the young.  The child whose parents take this book to heart will grow up knowing not only how to use a fork, charm an aunt, and impress a college admissions officer, but also how to make himself as happy as he makes his parents, and add to the civility of the world.

The nation's foremost--and funniest--authority on etiquette does not hold with the fashionable belief that children are born naturally good, creative, and wise (a notion invented by the generation whose children invented the French Revolution).  Here, in a course of study organized from pre-Kindergarten to post-graduate, parents and children will find:

• etiquette for christenings, school dances, Valentine's Day, parent-teacher conferences, graduations, weddings, and conversations at the family dinner table;
• how to give a child his first allowance, and how a child should negotiate a bigger one;
• a compete course in table manners;
• why a nine-year-old young lady should not punch someone in the nose ("The reason, of course, is that blood ruins white gloves");
• rules for divorces parents, and, for weekend parents, alternatives to a visit to the zoo;
• etiquette for young hosts and houseguests;
• a glossary of necessary parental expressions, from "Because" to "You'll understand when you have children."
• All of this, and more, is delivered in Miss Manner's superbly well-informed, tartly sensible, enormously funny style in a book that no parent--and no child--should miss.