‘How to Train Your Dragon’
By Cressida Cowell
Book #1 in the How to Train Your Dragon Series
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Date: 2004
Pages: 214
Fiction/Non-Fiction: Fiction
Genre: Fantasy
Days to Read: 4
Purchase Locations: Amazon and Kindle Audible Book Depository Booktopia Dymocks QBD
Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III is a truly extraordinary Viking hero known throughout Vikingdom as “the Dragon Whisperer”…but it wasn’t always so. Travel back to the days when the mighty warrior was just a boy, the quiet and thoughtful son of the Chief of the Hairy Hooligans. Can Hiccup capture a dragon and train it without being torn limb from limb? Join the adventure as the small boy finds a better way to train his dragon and become a hero!
Straight up I was expecting ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ By Cressida Cowell to be the same as the movie because I’d seen that way before I’d even known it was a book. It is definitely not like the movie. But I ended up really enjoying it.
We follow Hiccup as he partakes in training. As part of this training he is expected to collect a small dragon from a den of dragons to train to become his own. I appreciate Hiccups realisation that this is not a good idea and that being the biggest and scariest Viking isn’t the most important thing.
We also meet Toothless. I think this is where there is the biggest difference between the movie and the book. Toothless in the movie is a Night Fury where has Toothless in the book is a common dragon. I feel like this is a key difference.
Toothless is a sassy dragon that has self preservation at the heart of all his actions and his development through the book is great for such a short book.
This is another easy read, definitely one that I flew through. It is a series that I will complete in the future.
Plot: 7/10
Ease of reading: 9.5/10
Character Development:8/10
World Building: 8/10
Quality of Writing: 8/10
Stars: 4/5
