It's Hard to Be Five: Learning How to Work My Control Panel

by Jamie Lee Curtis, Laura Cornell (Illustrator)

Overview

Jamie Lee Curtis and Laura Cornell, the #1 New York Times bestselling team behind Today I Feel Silly and I'm Gonna Like Me, return with It’s Hard to Be Five, a story of self-control and learning to do your best every day!

Learning not to hit? Having to wait your turn? Sitting still? It's hard to be five!

But Jamie Lee Curtis's encouraging text and Laura Cornell's playful illustrations make the struggles of self-control a little bit easier and a lot more fun. Kids will laugh in recognition of siblings, classmates, and friends—and maybe even themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060080952
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	07/31/2007
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	9.54(w) x 11.32(h) x 0.34(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Jamie Lee Curtis is a moody actor. She is the author of When I Was Little: A Four-Year-Old’s Memoir of Her Youth and Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born. Jamie lives in California with her fly fisherman husband, Christopher Guest, her dancing daughter, Annie, and her ball-playing boy, Tom.

Laura Cornell is the illustrator of Jamie Lee Curtis’s When I Was Little: A Four-Year-Old’s Memoir of Her Youth and Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born, as well as Annie Bananie by Leah Komaiko. Born and raised in California, she lives in New York City with her happy daughter, Lilly, and their two cats. Laura has closet moods.

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
Bestselling author Jamie Lee Curtis once again teams up with Laura Cornell for another sure-to-be winner, this time to celebrate the agony and the ecstasy of being five. Complemented by Cornell's knee-slapping illustrations, which capture a frustrated boy learning to make sense of his changing world, Curtis zeroes in on the transformative age of five, when mouths have a mind of their own, clothes never fit, and of course, going to school for the first time is no picnic ("It's hard to be five. It takes Superman skill. Sitting in circles. Sitting so still"). But as fans have come to appreciate from Curtis, the author also shows the positive side of the coin: Being five also means responsibility, knowing yourself better, and recognizing that "I have my own mind and I have my own heart." In true form, Curtis and Cornell show childhood like it is, keeping the upbeat pace that readers found in their previous Today I Feel Silly and I'm Gonna Like Me. Five-year-olds will certainly cheer the voice that this duo lends them, while kids younger or older than five can reflect on how that age is an important door to identity and independence.

bn.com

Curtis echoes Dr. Seuss's Oh, the Places You'll Go! in her latest collaboration with Cornell that laments and celebrates the agony and the ecstasy of being five years old. Rhythmic verses bounce along as the boy narrator lists his daily challenges, most involving the entropic nature of childhood that flies in the face of etiquette and hygiene: "It's hard to be five. Just yelled at my brother. / My mind says do one thing, / my mouth says another." As ever, Cornell's hilarious, detail-rich illustrations effervesce with amusing asides that catapult the engaging but unspectacular verse to another level. A couple of clunky lines ("My body's my car, / and I'm licensed to steer") are, like the subtitle, perplexing and overly adult. Still, children will relate to this vivacious tale of a boy who likes to stay dirty, pretend to be a ninja, and bite his friends-but, on the brighter side, builds things, grows things, and says "thank you" and "please." (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews