Post on 02-Mar-2020
Cressida Cowell was born in London on the 15th of
April 1966. She has a
brother and a sister and her
family name was Hare.
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Cowell has three children,
Maisie, Clemmie and
Alexander. Her husband is Simon Cowell (not the X
Factor one!).
Cowell studied English at
Keble College, Oxford and
illustration at St Martin's
School of Art in Brighton.
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Cowell has published more than
twenty books in three series; Emily
Brown, How to Train your Dragon and The Wizards of Once.
As a child, Cowell spent a lot of time on an uninhabited island off the west
coast of Scotland. The family were
dropped off by boat and picked up
again two weeks later.
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As a child on the island,
Cowell spent her time drawing
and writing and listening to
her father's stories about the Vikings and dragons that had
inhabited the islands.
Her first published book was
her final art school project;
Little Bo Peep's Library Book.
It was published in 1998.
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It takes Cowell about a year to
write and illustrate a book. The
Emily Brown books were written by Cowell and illustrated by
Neal Layton.
Cowell's favourite author when
she was a child was Diana Wynn Jones. Her favourite
book was The Ogre
Downstairs. She also loved
The Lorax by Dr Seuss.
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Her best friend at boarding
school was Lauren Child,
author of the Charlie and
Lola books and her daughters played the part of
Lola in the TV series.
When she was nine, Cowell entered a writing competition
and was amazed to win it. This
gave her the confidence to
become a professional writer.
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Her book series The Wizards of
Once is inspired by Levin Down in
Sussex. As a child she imagined the bumpy ground was a burial
ground for fairies.
Cowell writes her books in a
shed at the bottom of her
garden so that she isn't
disturbed when she is writing.
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Cowell won the Blue Peter Book
award in 2018 for her book The
Wizards of Once. She also won the
Nestlé Children's Book Prize in 2006 for This Rabbit Belongs to Emily
Brown.
How to Train your Dragon was
made into an animated film in
2010, with How to Train your
Dragon 2 released in 2014.
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Cowell took inspiration from
J R R Tolkien's The Hobbit
when inventing Dragonese for the Hiccup books.
How to Train your Dragon has
been translated into 38
languages and sold more
than seven million copies.
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Cowell originally planned to write
three books in the How to Train your
Dragon series but ended up writing twelve!
Cowell met the editor who
published her first book at the awards ceremony for
a competition she had
entered while studying
illustration.
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Cowell was encouraged to write by
her teachers, especially her primary
school teacher Miss Mellows and her history teacher Miss Macdonald.