Oh, wait, wait. How could I forget this? My parents got the LIfe Nature series of books when they first came out. I was seven or eight at the time. I devoured them. I don't know if this was the first in the series, but this is the first one I went through, and I remember turned to Chapter 3 or 4, and there was an up-closed image of a fierce shark face, and I was actually startled:
I was talking with family members at a gathering, and I used the word "scarce" correctly, except I pronounced it "skairk," because I'd only seen it, not heard it. But my parents were proud that I knew the word and could use it appropriately. They corrected the pronunciation and complimented me on the use.
Weird what you remember from your youth.
That was a good series. One of the books was
Evolution. Kinda brave stuff for the early '60s. Another was
Ecology, again from the early '60s, and that's when I first heard that word. They were quite enjoyable and illuminating for this (approximately) second-grader.