How to Fight a Dragon’s Fury, the 12th and final book in Cressida Cowell’s How to Train Your Dragon stories, will be published on September 8. The series has been phenomenally successful, selling more than 7m copies worldwide and spawning two animated films (the second being the 12th highest-grossing movie in the world last year).
The series has been a rite of passage not only for its hero, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, dragon rider of the Island of Berk and son of the chieftain Stoick the Vast, but also for his creator. The story was initially inspired by Cowell’s childhood holidays on a remote Scottish island, but through the writing of it she has found herself thinking about the relationship between parents and children — her daughter Maisie had just been born as the saga began in 2003. “I learnt things from being in the shoes of Stoick about my relationship with my father. And I’ve said things I would have found difficult to say directly to him. In every generation children and parents can love each other very much but find it difficult to communicate.”
The stories also explore “what it is to be a boy nowadays”, drawing on true experiences. “Without emotional truth it would be just a funny adventure.”
Cowell set out to hook reluctant readers without dumbing down. “The challenge was to have a level of simplicity, but also moral lessons and profundity and poetic language.” The books have got successively more complex, on the assumption that readers became more confident by reading them.
It is, says Cowell “incredibly hard” to part with her creation. But she has been “unbelievably lucky”, not least in the loyalty of the “extraordinary” David Tennant, who reads the 11 audiobooks in many accents, including his native Scots.
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Cressida Cowell is at the Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival on Saturday, October 10, at 11am (cheltenhamfestivals.com/literature)
The pick of children’s events
MICHAEL ROSEN AND CHRIS RIDDELL Celebrating their first book together, Rosen reads his poems while Riddell draws on stage, Age 4+, Saturday, October 3, at 3pm
LEARN TO DRAW TIGERS With Helen Stephens, the author of How to Hide a Lion, Age 3-7, Wednesday, October 7, at 4pm
HITLER AND ME Michael Morpurgo and Judith Kerr discuss their award-winning works with Nicolette Jones, Age 10+, Saturday, October 10, at 12.45pm
UTTERLY AMAZING HUMAN BODY Professor Robert Winston unravels anatomy with staggering facts from his new interactive book, Age 8+,Sunday, October 11, at 11.30am