'I spent a lot of time working my way into it. 'I loved How to Train Your Dragon and, like a parent, you do wonder how can you love another child as much as you have loved the first one? So I was aware that it would be difficult for me, and for How to Train Your Dragon fans, to make that transition to a new world.' To help with that transition, she started working behind the scenes on the first book some five years ago. Indeed film rights to the new series have already been snapped up by Dreamworks, which is behind the How to Train Your Dragon film animations.įor Cowell personally, it was important that her new series would engage her as a writer as much as her Hiccup adventures had. Photograph Copyright: Sam Jones Author linkĬRESSIDA COWELL knew that her bestselling How to Train Your Dragon series would be a hard act to follow but her new series, beginning with the powerful and richly-layered THE WIZARDS OF ONCE - handsomely illustrated by Cowell and packed with adventure and magic, is every bit as appealing and enchanting as Hiccup's quest. She has never met a real dragon, but would rather like one as a pet! She realised as a child that she 'might be a different species' from her adored father when she was holding him by the ankles as he hung upside down from a cliff to spy on a nest of buzzards!Ĭressida finds illustrating her own work satisfying but she also loves writing books for other people to illustrate as the end result can be so unexpected and inspiring.Ĭressida Cowell lives in West London with her husband and three children. Cressida and her family were taken off to camp on an island that was so small that you could see the sea all round from the highest point and it was cut off from the outside world but surrounded by an archipelago of other tiny, uninhabited islands.

Hiccup's adventures were inspired by Cressida's memories of her family holidays on an island in the Inner Hebrides.

How to Fight a Dragon's Fury, the 12th book in the series, was published in 2015 and completed the series.ĭreamWorks released the first of three planned animated films of How to Train Your Dragon in March 2010. Rights have been sold in more than thirty languages. Hodder Children's Books published her first novel for eight to twelve year olds, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, in March 2003 to popular and critical acclaim. This was followed by DON'T DO THAT KITTY KILROY!, HICCUP, THE VIKING WHO WAS SEASICK, CLAYDON WAS A CLINGY CHILD and ONE TOO MANY TIGERS, all published by Hodder.

in English Literature from Oxford, a BA in Graphic Design from St Martin's and an MA in Narrative Illustration from Brighton.Ĭressida wrote and illustrated her first picture book, LITTLE BO PEEP'S LIBRARY BOOK for Hodder Children's Books in 1998. Cressida Cowell grew up mostly in Central London.

Hiccup the seasick viking