When Sam woke up on his fifth birthday, he took a good look in the mirror to see if he'd changed at all. It was hard to say. He seemed just the way he had always been.
"I ought to look braver," he said to his mother. "And bigger and stronger and more unafraid. I thought when I got to be five years old I wouldn't be scared of anything."
"You can still feel afraid when you're old," she told him.
"You can?" said Sam. "What happens then?"
"It all depends. Your fears can grow to a very big size if you let them. But you'll find that they're really quite small after all if you try to be brave and look them straight in the eye," she explained, then she went away to get things ready for Sam's birthday party.
Sam looked into the mirror again and tried to be brave. He stuck out his chin and wrinkled his nose, he stood up tall on the tips of his toes and he made a good muscle.
"I might have been scared a few times before when I was four," he told himself. "But not any more. I'm five!"