My Brave Year of Firsts

PreS-Gr 1–In this10th book by this best-selling team, readers follow wild child Frankie through her first-grade year. Other firsts include crashing on a two-wheeler, cleaning up her new pet’s poop, and falling off a pony and are balanced by learning to tie shoes, walking around the block with friends, and helping Dad at his restaurant.  “Some FIRSTS just happen,/some come when I try,/some FIRSTS make me smile,/some make me cry.” Curtis’s encouragement to be “brave, true and strong” is empowering. Cornell’s ink-and-watercolor cartoons burst with energy and humor. The first-day-of-school spread is hilarious: frantic parents crowding the door, one child flailing in tantrum, another facing the corner, one in fetal position under a table, and the heroine instantly enamored of a set of buck-toothed twins with flyaway hair. Both author and illustrator capture the joys of saying yes to a busy life.–Gay Lynn Van Vleck, Henrico County Library, Glen Allen, VA