25-02-2025
Cressida Cowell: ‘I want to make the mums laugh and the dads cry'
Cressida Cowell has spent years inventing battles from which her young Viking hero, Hiccup, can emerge bruised but victorious. He has conquered dragons, baddies, and his own insecurities, while Cowell has conquered the world. From a single book in 2003, How To Train Your Dragon has morphed into a global franchise that is popular from China to Brazil.
But writing for children brings its own real-life battles: for their attention. 'We are fighting a really difficult situation, which is that the screen has never been better. The competition for children's time has got tougher and tougher,' she says, perched on the corner of an armchair in the living room of her west London home.
'As a writer you have to write books that are as exciting and are as worth their time and effort as going on a screen. And that is tough,' says Cowell, who is 58. A statement bracelet on her forearm adds edge to her black jumper and jeans combo. 'It's rather Viking-esque, isn't it? It was made by an architect and is empowering. It's like a battle cuff.'
Films of her own books – there are three DreamWorks animations and a live action version comes out in June ('I've watched it. It was pretty terrific to see our creative industries in action,' she tells me) – are fine, though, because those cinema audiences turn into readers. 'I've had so many letters over the years from children saying, 'I wasn't really a reader, but then I saw these movies.'' She has a point: her various books, which she illustrates in the studio-cum-shed that nestles at the back of her tiny terraced garden, have sold more than 16 million copies worldwide.
An entire theme park in Florida, due to open in May, will only further expand her franchise. 'It's going to be incredible,' she says. Fans looking to save on a US air fare could head, instead, to the Isle of Mull. A wildlife tour from Ulva Ferry, on Mull's western coast, will take them past the tiny, remote island of Little Colonsay, which Cowell's late father (Michael Hare, 2nd Viscount Blakenham, a former corporate and establishment heavyweight who was chairman of the RSPB and Kew Gardens) bought in the 1970s. Endless summers spent there as a child inspired her books, which mix text with emotive pen-and-ink sketches of Viking heroes, anti-heroes, and, of course, dragons. She sounds surprised the authorities on Mull have never capitalised on its link to Cowell's books. 'It's a decision for that part of the world, really, whether they want to. I mean, there it is, they could if they wanted to…'
Cowell's work has always been 'very visual': the less text, the less off-putting the book, and indeed her new spin-off series How to Train Your Dragon School – out in May – will include even more illustrations, a gateway for the uninitiated. This isn't to denigrate a youngster's capabilities. Children, she says, are smart, adding that they can run into trouble finding books to read. 'If they can only access books up to their reading abilities, they can quickly feel that books are a bit dull compared to telly and everything else.'
There is a simple solution, however. 'Audiobooks are a fantastic way into reading. There needs to be more emphasis on them. Some people do look down on them as lesser – maybe they seem like the easy option – but the most important thing when children are young is that [reading] is fun, so that they want to read the next thing, in whatever format.' (New research by the National Literacy Trust, released after our conversation, shows that children now prefer audiobooks to reading books for the first time. Just one in three children aged eight to 18 said they read for pleasure.)
Parents and teachers need to make more time for reading out loud full stop, she adds. 'You should read aloud to kids way longer than they can read to themselves. At school, suddenly all the kids in a class are on the same level. They're not competing with each other on reading ability.'
Another parental tip is not to pigeonhole their children. 'Parents, should never say, 'Oh, so and so is the reader and the other one doesn't read very much.''
Plus people change. One of her children (she has three; the youngest is at university) didn't get into books until they found The One: Louise Rennison's Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging, as it happens. 'They were about 13 and that same kid went on to study English Literature.'
Parents also need to lead by example. 'What's really helpful is if they see adults around them enjoying books themselves. I set out to make the dads cry and the mums laugh. If your dad reads you a book and he cries at the end of it, that sends this incredibly important message to a kid – that books are powerful things.'
Cowell, who was the Children's Laureate from 2019 to 2021, has reason to be anxious about the outlook for her industry. A survey last year by the National Literacy Trust found children's reading enjoyment had fallen to its lowest level in almost two decades, while reading frequency is also at a historic low. Research shows children who read for pleasure are more likely to do well in school and own a house. She adds: 'The more your literacy points go up, the more likely it is that you won't end up in prison, that you'll have a job, that you'll vote. The problem is there are still children reading for pleasure but they tend to be from wealthier families, and that is a social problem kicked down the line.'
Hope lies in initiatives such as the Libraries for Primaries, a privately funded alliance that has helped to open 1,000 libraries in three years. Even this isn't ideal. 'I feel uncomfortable that it's dealt with in a 'Let's have a whip round and provide some books for our particular school' because there isn't a nationwide strategy for addressing the problem.'
Children need guidance. 'You need someone trained up in getting kids reading for pleasure. Finding something that excites them. You might start with a comic book or a book about football and then you can move them on to maybe something more complicated.' They also need help avoiding books that are bad, like the plethora churned out by celebrities who think they can write. 'If they're good, then great. But if not, then,' she pauses, '…it's a shame. If a child picks up too many books that don't excite them, then they will eventually think, 'Oh books, there's not much in them,'' she says.
Her own childhood love of books is evident from a bookshelf of faded old editions that lines one of the walls behind her. Many belonged to her father, while some belonged to her father's grandfather: the Shakespeare plays and the Trollopes. Others are childhood favourites: Peter Pan, Treasure Island, books by Diana Wynne Jones, Astrid Lindgren, Ursula le Guin, and Violet Needham.
She credits internal pressure to live up to some of her family's weightier presences – her uncle was head of the US Supreme Court – for inspiring her writing. 'Embedded in the books is little me looking up at these giants and thinking, 'How am I ever going to measure up to these huge people,' she pauses, splitting with laughter, 'who are being Big Business People, or Supreme Court people. What am I going to do to impress them?' As well as writing about dragons, she is 'also writing about what it takes to be a leader. That's also probably because I had a lot of people chatting about big political questions over my head.'
Saving Generation Alpha from illiteracy would be quite the legacy. I wouldn't put it past her to pull it off.
