How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell

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 becomes a hero!

I loved the film of this so I was both itching and apprehensive about reading this. After all there is always the risk of the film slaughtering the books or the book being terrible and the film being better.

Either way, something is going to be a disappointment.

BUT I am pleased to announce that in this instance BOTH are brilliant - highly different from each other but both good in their own way.

Moving onto the book.

We have Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III heir to the Hairy Hooligans tribe and quite possibly the worst Viking ever until a giant dragon washes up on the beach near his village ready to eat everyone and then he comes into his own.

Like many books we have the totally average kid who will end up being out hero but what I really enjoyed about this that Hiccup is in a position that we would think would keep him out of the firing line of bullies. After all, he is the chief’s son, and future chief of the tribe. But we (ok, I) would be wrong. He is bullied and put down. And in a strange way that is what I liked most. Despite being in a position that could make him puffed and full of himself he is not. He doesn’t think he is entitled to more than any of the other kids and even views himself as less than them because he is smaller than the rest of them. But in the long run he shows that it is what is inside his heart that makes him a hero. Cheesy I know but super good!

The major difference between the book and the film is that Vikings and dragons are not sworn enemies. The dragons are caught and trained by the Vikings for hunting and travel etc. And it was this difference that made the book all the more enjoyable.  

Toothless – Hiccup’s dragon – is a little terror, refusing to do anything that Hiccup asks him to. And yet, like Hiccup, he is different from his own kind and is bullied by the other dragons. But like Hiccup he comes out on top.

Marvellous first book of a series!