When I was ten years old I started visiting the American Museum of Natural History all by myself on Saturdays. Aside from the dinosaurs and insects, one of my favorite haunts was the Hall of Invertebrates, which housed hundreds of gorgeous glass models of microscopic creatures I had never seen before. I also bought the accompanying pamphlet, "A Drama of the Microscope" by Roy Waldo Miner, and spent hours memorizing the beautiful names of the microscopic animals illustrated in the Rotifera Group Exhibit, a three-dimensional glass replica diarama that enthralled me whenever I visited the Hall.

At Christmas that year my father bought me Nature's Wonders in Full Color [1956] edited by Charles L. Sherman. I noticed immediately that the photo of the Rotifera Group Exhibit on page 77 had been printed upside down! I complained to my father, who was struck by my scholarly disappointment. He typed a letter of protest to Doubleday which I signed. Charles Sherman promptly appologized, calling me a "sharp-eyed rascal," and asked me to take a careful look at his next book, Flowers of the World in Full Color [1956], which arrived in the mail several months later. And, since he was one of Doubleday's top editors, he also had my discovery written up in the Doubleday house organ, as did my father in a local Bronx newspaper (he was its advertising manager).

Anyway, all this excitement gave me the idea that you could cause a great fuss and commotion in the big wide world just by keeping your eyes pealed. It's an attitude which has served me well for over half a century.