Cressida Cowell Fact Cards - Teaching Ideas · Cressida Cowell was born in London on the 15th of...

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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


Cowell was encouraged to write by

her teachers, especially her primary

school teacher Miss Mellows and her history teacher Miss Macdonald.

Cressida Cowell Fact Cards - Teaching Ideas · Cressida Cowell was born in London on the 15th of...

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