“It’s Hard to be Five,” Jamie Lee Curtis’ newest picture book celebrates the growing independence of a young child and the courage which children need to try things for the first time. Frankie is experiencing many “firsts” this year – some of them good, and some of them challenging. She learns to ride – and crash – a bicycle. She is given her first dog, learns how to tie her shoes and starts grade one at school. She begins taking riding lessons on a pony named Ace. (And when Frankie has her first fall, she learns to hold tightly to the reins, how to command the pony, and how to trot.) Later in the year, there are even more firsts for Frankie. She gets her first public library card and chooses her first book. She participates in her first pony show, begins a ballet class and plays her first game of T-ball. Most of Frankie’s firsts are happy, but a few are not – such as her first experience of getting caught (by her parents) in a lie. Like Curtis’ other picture books, My Brave Year of Firsts will be popular with young children, featuring an appealing story and the detailed, amusing watercolour-and-line sketches of illustrator Laura Cornell.