How to Train Your Dragon has now been published in over thirty languages. Film rights were sold to DreamWorks Animation in 2003 for a substantial sum and the filmed version was released into cinemas in March 2010. The 3D animated film from the studio that created Shrek, Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda, was directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois (the directors of Lilo and Stich) and produced by Bonnie Arnold (who produced Toy Story). How to Train Your Pupils - Tes meets Cressida Cowell | Tes Magazine". www.tes.com . Retrieved 15 January 2023. My top writing tip would be to read lots, to give you a feel for the way different stories can be told. Also practise writing as much as you can – write, and re-write – don’t worry if you don’t finish a story, as long as you are practising, that’s what matters. Also don’t worry if your stories aren’t very long: I didn’t start out writing books as long as the ones I write now.

Without giving away the ending in a review, which is a difficult task, all that can be said is that this is a wonderful series to be savoured by fans of How To Train Your Dragon. Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks. Home > I do a lot of research into real things to make you think that the imaginary things are true. That goes for the drawings as well as the plots and the stories. I’ll discover that Vikings discovered America way before Christopher Columbus. And so I’ll think ‘oh, that’s very interesting. Maybe I can make Hiccup (from How to Train Your Dragon) go to America?’ We caught up with her to find out how she ended up writing her books and where she gets her inspiration from. Plus, she gives us her expert tips on writing and illustrating.It was also the incredible Iron Age hill forts. All of Britain is covered in extraordinary history: thousands and thousands of years of people living in our incredible landscape. Trundle Hill, for example, and Maiden Castle are Iron Age hillforts. Subsequent generations had obviously seen these incredible fortifications and thought they couldn’t have been built by human beings, they must have been built by giants. So there were a lot of legends in that countryside about giants living there. And so I sort of mixed them all up together… the incredible wild woods, the stories about the giants and the fairies that were all made up by people who lived after the Iron Ages, and I put them all together into Wizards of Once. For Wizards of Once, I was wanting to have a personification of evil magic. And I just couldn’t think of a better word than ‘witch’ because it carries such weight. The word ‘witch’… suddenly you’re thinking of the witches in The Wizard of Oz, for example. Because we’ve got such a history of believing in terrifying witches in the past, I think it’s the associations that that word carries. I was very careful to make the witches both male and female because I don’t approve of how witches are often made out to be only female! I could have gone another way but that’s what I chose the witches to personify. Wish is a girl from a warrior tribe and Xar is a boy from a wizard tribe, living in a world loosely based on Ancient Britain at the beginning of the Iron Age. The Wizards of Once is a fabulously imaginative, funny and unpredictable adventure that will leave readers desperate for the next instalment.The book is full of gorgeous illustrations by Cressida Cowell, which drag you into the magical world and pull you into Wish and Xar’s adventures. This definitely will not disappoint fans of How To Train Your Dragon.

Oh, it’s such a lovely thing. I’m really hoping that it will do for children what going to these places did for me, which is to spark their imagination and get them thinking about writing their own stories about these places. I hope that it will bring everything alive for children. Armistice Day: A Collection of Remembrance - Spark Interest and Educate Children about Historical MomentsTake your child on a magical journey or let them explore their own with this magic list of magic books about magic. Hello Yellow - 80 Books to Help Children Nurture Good Mental Health and Support With Anxiety and Wellbeing - The illustrations of Xar, Wish, the magical creatures, notices and maps will be familiar to fans of How to Train Your Dragon but they are darker and have more of a feel of Tinder or A Monster Calls. An enjoyable read for anyone who loves the idea that 'Once there was Magic'. The School Librarian

LoveReading4Kids exists because books change lives, and buying books through LoveReading4Kids means you get to change the lives of future generations, with 25% of the cover price donated to schools in need. Join our community to get personalised book suggestions, extracts straight to your inbox, 10% off RRPs, and to change children’s lives. Hutton, Caroline (25 April 2021). "Author Cressida Cowell on how she proved her teachers wrong". The Sunday Times magazine . Retrieved 25 April 2021. (subscription required) Without ever losing the qualities that have made her books so deservedly popular, very gently (and cleverly) Cressida Cowell leads her young readers into something deeper, something richer, something even more magical. In doing so, her contribution to children's literature follows exactly the same path. She is a true hero of current children's fiction. Her books are a gift and children, parents, carers, and teachers should all be deeply grateful for it. * Magic Fiction Since Potter * Cressida Cowell grew up in London and on a small, uninhabited island off the west coast of Scotland. The name of the island is a secret, but it was such a small island it wasn’t really big enough to have a name at all. There were no roads or shops or electricity on the island, just one house and a storm-blown wilderness of sea-birds and heather.Families can talk about the family relationships in The Wizards of Once. How do Xar and Wish feel about their dad and mom? Do your parents ever expect you to be or do something you're not able to? Adventures are fun and can bring out the best in you. Misfits can grow into their power, and can earn the respect of their parents and others. People who seem to be enemies may have good qualities and end up being allies. Children's author Cressida Cowell scoops philosophers' award for fight against stupidity". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 June 2017. Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide. Get started Close

The Wizards of Once books were inspired really by Sussex, near to where my grandmother grew up. I spent a lot of time there as a child and there were some incredible woods, including one of the oldest new forests in Europe called Kingley Vale where some of the trees are over 2000 years old. It’s pretty spooky! There are lots of wonderful stories about how on certain nights the trees would run red with blood because of the Viking ghosts. So it was partly the wild woods that inspired Wizards of Once. Exciting and thrilling with lots if action. Some of the characters are really funny and have lots of crazy ideas. . . like Zar trying to catch a witch. In a similar sort of way, if I’m trying to make you believe that my giant snow cats are real, I will do research into what a lynx might look like. And I’ll think ‘oh, well, it might have been a bit colder end of the bronze ages, beginning of the Iron Ages… so I’ll make my giant lynxes look like ordinary lynxes but much bigger. And those Canadian lynxes with soft fur like powder snow’.

LoveReading4Kids Says

An exciting and promising start... A fantastical adventure ensues, filled with mythical beasts, cliff-hangers and an epic struggle between good and evil The Scotsman Illustration is beautiful, fun and accessible, and offers another way to read a story! If you're struggling to find illustrated books for older children, then try some of these: all brilliant stories that are brilliantly illustrated... Cressida Cowell MBE FRSL (born 15 April 1966) [1] is a British children's author, popularly known for the book series, How to Train Your Dragon, which has subsequently become an award-winning franchise as adapted for the screen by DreamWorks Animation. [2] As of 2015, the series has sold more than seven million copies around the world. [3] I always begin my stories with a map of my imaginary place. Lots of other authors have done the same – Robert Louis Stevenson drew a map of Treasure Island before starting to write. This is a really easy way of thinking about characters and setting.