Gidget Book

Few could have imagined that the adventures of a teenage Californian girl by the name of Kathy Kohner would change the surfing world. Kathy’s father Frederick documented her exploits of learning how to surf and trying to fit in with the Malibu beach crew in a 1957 book titled "Gidget". Kathy's nickname with the surfers was Girl Midget which was abbreviated to Gidget. The lightly fictionalised accounts of Gidget's adventures became a hugely popular movie internationally in 1959, followed by two early 1960s sequels and then a 1965 TV series, all featuring quirky surfing characters and fun in the sun at the beach. Striking a chord with the global youth movement evolving at the time, millions of people were exposed to surfing at a time when the equipment was becoming both more plentiful and easier to use, Gidget helping create surfing’s first worldwide boom.