Hiccup: How to Train Your Dragon [Paperback]

'If you haven't discovered Hiccup yet, you're missing out on one of the greatest inventions of modern children's literature.' 

(Guardian children's editor 20050108)

CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK: 'This book is great fun and has a Blackadderish sense of humour ... full of the sort of jokes that will make schoolboys snigger.' (Nicolette Jones, The Sunday Times 20030622)

A super story, inventive, ingenious, perpetually surprising. One to cherish. (Armadillo, Spring 2003 20030622)

A wonderfully wittily written and illustrated story. (Waterstones Quarterly Magazine )

How to Train Your Dragon is a delightful narrative caper... It offers a challenging read to 11-year-olds, and rewards reading aloud, especially for those who relish an element of theatre at story time. (Lindsey Fraser, Sunday Herald, Glasgow )

... raucous and slapstick... liberally illustrated with [Cressida Cowell's] riotous drawings, notes and maps. (The Financial Times )

[Cressida Cowell] puts a contemporary spin on the old brains over brawn moral and brings the story to a climax with a thrilling dragon duel. Lots for lots of different readers to enjoy. (Books for Keeps )

Cowell brings Hiccup to life in this silly and delightful little novel. (St Paul Pioneer Press )

Bulging with good jokes, funny drawings and dramatic scenes, it is absolutely wonderful. (Independent on Sunday )

"The combination of cartoons with sharp wit is what makes this book so uniquely special"

(Books Quaterly (Waterstones) )

A wonderfully wittily written and illustrated story.

A super story, inventive, ingenious, perpetually surprising. One to cherish.

Bulging with good jokes, funny drawings and dramatic scenes, it is absolutely wonderful.

Read the original books before you see the How to Train Your Dragon film!

THE STORY BEGINS in the first volume of Hiccup's How to Train Your Dragon memoirs...

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III was an awesome sword-fighter, a dragon-whisperer and the greatest Viking Hero who ever lived. But it wasn't always like that. In fact, in the beginning, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III was the most put upon Viking you'd ever seen. Not loud enough to make himself heard at dinner with his father, Stoick the Vast; not hard enough to beat his chief rival, Snotlout, at Bashyball, the number one school sport and CERTAINLY not stupid enough to go into a cave full of dragons to find a pet... It's time for Hiccup to learn how to be a Hero.

How to Train Your Dragon is soon to be a DreamWorks film starring Gerrard Butler, America Ferrera and Jonah Hill, out in March 2010 adapted from the best selling How to Train Your Dragon series by Cressida Cowell.

Read the rest of Hiccup's exploits in the How to Train Your Dragon series in How to Be a Pirate, How to Speak Dragonese, How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse, How to Twist a Dragon's Tale, A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons, How to Ride a Dragon's Storm, and How to Break a Dragon's Heart.

Check out the all-new Hiccup website at www.howtotrainyourdragonbooks.com It's the place to go for games, downloads, activities and sneak peeks! Read all about Hiccup and all of your favourite characters, learn to speak Dragonese and train your own dragon to do tricks!

(20030401)

* A Viking Molesworth in the form of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III.
* A very funny adventure story as Hiccup finds a dragon, trains it and, with its help, manages to subdue two enormous monstrous Sea Dragons. In doing so, he also conquers his bullies, gains the respect of his family and schoolmates and shows his tribe that there can sometimes be more than one way of doing something...
* Written as though by Hiccup, with an author's preface and notes throughout the text, interspersed with his own sketches (black and white line illustrations by Cressida Cowell) as Hiccup builds up more helpful reference material for future Viking heroes (the only existing guide to training dragons has three words of text: Shout At It). A similar playfulness and intertextuality as The Stinky Cheese Man.
* Perfect for boys, with lots of humour, dragons, bloodshed, gob and battles.
* Following in the footsteps of Lauren Child with her Clarice books, developing picture book character with real potential to take on a life of his own and bring him to a wider, broader audience, by an author who can work brilliantly on a variety of levels.

Key Reviews:

A classic. - The Viking Herald

How to Train Your Dragon is a must read for every Hero who is having a little trouble being as Heroic as he would like to be. - The Barbarian Librarian

Cressida grew up in Chelsea. She studied English Literature at Keble College, Oxford University. She then worked at Macmillan in the Fiction department. She took a BA at St Martins in graphic design and then an MA in Narrative Illustration at Brighton. She is married with two children and lives in London. (20030406)