Hay Festival 2015 // Cressida Cowell
Cressida Cowell, author of the How to Train your Dragon series is at Hay, talking about her own childhood, her dream of flying and her sympathy for the Dragon Furious
“Who thinks that dragons could exist?” Cressida asks. A sea of hands shoot skyward, as both children and parents alike assert their faith in these mythical creatures.
This is the power of great storytelling: Making the unbelievable real. After all, writing fiction is just like telling a really big lie with details embedded by authors to make the tales come to life, Cressida laughs. And “You can all be writers too!” she proclaims to the audience.
Cressida is a master of great lying. The Tata tent is full to bursting with young fans in rapture as Cressida reads from her latest not-yet-released book (still a wedge of A4 fresh from her printer), How to Fight a Dragon’s Fury, with all the gusto of Stoic himself. One mother tells me that her ten-year-old, Luca has been awake since 5am. He’s been “bouncing off the walls” with excitement to meet the author of the How To Train Your Dragon series that has captured the hearts and minds of a generation.
What child doesn’t want to read about hellfire and brimstone and a world in which dragon’s are kept as pets? “My dream as a kid was to feel like I was flying,” exclaimed Cressida; a dream that many in the audience share, evidence by yet another overwhelming show of hands.
Cressida, who grew up reading and writing, wants to write books that her brother (who avoided reading like the plague, with the exceptions of Beano and the Guinness World Book of Records) would enjoy. So, she determined to make this series more exciting than TV. She thought, “I’m gonna make these books look as though they’ve been dragged down to the bottom of the ocean and clawed by dragon talons. I’m going to cover it with ink blotches to make it look like it’s been splattered with blood,” adding sheepishly, “sorry parents.”
Indeed, these books are not just for children. Cressida hopes that parents read them aloud with their children, adopting voices, acting out scenes and “looking back on their own childhoods.” The series is a means for families to share the process of growing up (and sometimes away from one’s parents), exploring the parental bond between Stoic and Hiccup, Hiccup and Toothless.
This bond is incredibly important to Cressida, who started writing about Hiccup and Toothless seventeen years ago when she became a mother herself. “It’s actually an emotional occasion,” she said, as How to Fight a Dragon’s Fury – the 12th in the series – will be the last, Hiccup’s last hurrah.
This speaks to Cressida’s own experience. Unlike her intrepid dad – the real life inspiration for Stoic’s “lovely mix of pomposity and incompetence” – Cressida was frightened of lots of things. She told us that her daughter Clemmie enjoyed maths and sports at school, neither of which are subjects particularly close to Cressida’s heart. But Cressida “got over it and learned to play netball.” On a profound level, this series celebrates divergence and being true to oneself, teaching children that they don’t have to be carbon copies of their parents.
Hiccup, the story’s loveable protagonist and village “runt” embraces his differences as we follow him on his journey to becoming the hero the hard way. As Cressida revealed in the first ever reading of the series finale, “The world needs a hero.”
Undoubtedly, the stories that we read as children shape who we are as adults. Cressida’s stories have inspired an army of young creative people, on their journeys to becoming their very own versions of real-life heroes.
Photo: Courtesy of Hay Festival
Text: Francesca Donovan