Cressida Cowell Press Reviews
Cowell's short sentences and scribbly pencil illustrations carry considerable skill and humour, advocate love, and manage to be lively and momentous. -- Nicolette Jones - The Sunday Times
Welcome to the fourth and final book in the absolutely sparkling Wizards of Once series... a wonderful series to be savoured by fans of How To Train Your Dragon. It's so well written, the characters and story come totally alive on the page - and Cressida Cowell's beautiful, expressive scratchy drawings add so much. This is mesmerising, truly captivating world-building. The final battle scenes are breathtaking, too - Cressida's imagination knows no bounds, and this is epic stuff! On top of all that, there's real wisdom here about how adults need to take responsibility to sort out the world, which is timely in this era of children protesting against climate change. A great finale to a great series. - BookTrust
Children's Laureate Cressida Cowell returns with the fourth and final instalment of her marvellously magical Wizards of Once series...The pages of this funny, clever adventure story are bursting with lots of exuberant artwork. It's a brilliant conclusion to a wonderful series. - The Week Junior
The final book in this incredible series is a rollercoaster ride of adventure. Xar and Wish have found the ingredients for the Spell to get rid of Witches. But first they must negotiate tiny tunnels, defeat a hungry Tatzelwurm monster and escape with the Cup of Second Chances. With surprises and laughs galore, the Children's Laureate delivers once again.**** Five stars -- Natasha Harding - The Sun
Scotland's Children's Laureate is back with the final book in the best-selling The Wizards Of Once series. Cowell, author of How To Train Your Dragon, reunites nine to 11-year-olds with Xar and Wish who are on a quest to unite their worlds in time to save the WiIdwoods. The duo are now locked in a rollercoaster adventure in which the Kingwitch is calling them to the lake of the lost. Pure magic! - Sunday Post
Better than ever....everything you could want from our wonderful Children's Laureate - Angels & Urchins
Readers will love this fourth and final book in Cowell's high-octane WIZARDS OF ONCE series. Cowell is one of our greatest living storytellers and readers will be left of the edge of their seat/beds - School Notices Magazine
The final book in the Wizards of Once series, Never and Forever, is every bit as wonderful as its predecessors. Quirky illustrations and engaging characters make this a compelling read...This is a story full of action. The mysterious narrator is revealed at the close of the tale, having guided the reader through it, offering dire warnings and words of wisdom along the way. Many touches set this apart from other series - the antics of the key, the spoon and the fork; the satirical treatment of the children's parents; the children's wonderful entourage of companions, especially the adorable Squeezjoos, who deserves a novel all of his own! Mayhem and madness brilliantly combine to create a highly engaging series, culminating in the final story, Never and Forever, a triumph of fantasy! Five stars**** - Reading Zone
This is everything you'd expect from the Laureate: engaging, imperfect characters who have much to learn, a strong narrator that guides readers through the story, and sprinklings of cultural references and stretching words to keep readers of all levels stimulated....Another energetic page turner - Children's Book of the Week, Press Association
Cressida Cowell is a phenomenon, producing volume after volume of fantasy adventure stories without ever losing quality or zest. She also illustrates them in wild black pencil, with cartoonish figures sometimes taking up whole pages or else cropping up mid paragraph... Characters are more human than heroic, as often as not possessing a fragile dignity that never quite succeeds in covering up their faults however hard they try. The only exception is Looker, Xar's older brother, happy to exhibit his essential selfishness until the very end. At this point it gradually becomes clear that all the main characters are in fact junior players in the future court of King Arthur. But the unhappiness and division that is now bound to follow as they get older is not part of this jolly story's remit. Readers can simply sit back and enjoy rollicking fun from an author-illustrator working at top form as well as high speed. The perfect choice as the current Children's Laureate in 2019, her tenure has now been extended to June 2022. Children are lucky to have her, and so are we. -- Nicholas Tucker - Books for Keeps
About Cressida Cowell
Cressida Cowell, Waterstones Children’s Laureate 2019–2021
Cressida Cowell grew up in London and on a small, uninhabited island off the west coast of Scotland. The name of the island is a secret, but it was such a small island it wasn’t really big enough to have a name at all. There were no roads or shops or electricity on the island, just one house and a storm-blown wilderness of sea-birds and heather.
Every year, Cressida’s family spent four weeks of the summer, and two weeks of the spring, on the island. The family had to catch their own fish to eat. The house was lit by candle-light, and there was no telephone or television, so Cressida spent her time drawing and writing stories.
In the evening, Cressida’s father read the children tales of the Vikings, who had invaded this island Archipelago over half a millennium before, of the quarrelsome Tribes who fought and tricked each other, and of legendary dragons who were supposed to live in the caves in the cliffs. This was how Cressida herself first began to write stories about Vikings and dragons, back when she was eight or nine years old. Many years later, she turned her original childhood ideas into the book How to Train Your Dragon, featuring Hiccup the reluctant Viking, and his equally reluctant dragon, Toothless.
When Cressida wasn’t on the island, she was going to school at Marlborough College in Wiltshire where she met and became close friends with Lauren Child, a fellow author/illustrator and the creator of TV’s Charlie and Lola. Cressida and Lauren remain close friends. Indeed Lauren is godmother to Cressida’s daughter Clemmie.
After school, Cressida obtained a BA in English Literature from Oxford University, a BA in Graphic Design from St Martin’s and an MA in Narrative Illustration from Brighton.
Cressida wrote and illustrated her first picture book, Little Bo Peep’s Library Book, for Hodder Children’s Books in 1998. Her first novel for eight to twelve year olds, How to Train Your Dragon, was published to popular and critical acclaim in 2003: ‘The next big thing in children’s literature,’ wrote The Independent on Sunday. ‘Irresistibly funny, exciting and endearing,’ said The Times.
How to Train Your Dragon has now been published in over thirty languages. Film rights were sold to DreamWorks Animation in 2003 for a substantial sum and the filmed version was released into cinemas in March 2010. The 3D animated film from the studio that created Shrek, Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda, was directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois (the directors of Lilo and Stich) and produced by Bonnie Arnold (who produced Toy Story).
Cressida Cowell is the head judge of the Wicked Young Writers Award and provided these top tips to budding writers:
* My top writing tip would be to read lots, to give you a feel for the way different stories can be told. Also practise writing as much as you can – write, and re-write – don’t worry if you don’t finish a story, as long as you are practising, that’s what matters. Also don’t worry if your stories aren’t very long: I didn’t start out writing books as long as the ones I write now.
* You can still do research when you are creating your own fantasy world. Kids often think that ideas get beamed into an author’s head, or that when you write fantasy you can’t do background reading, but many ideas in The Wizards of Once were sparked by books I read about the history of magic, and magical creatures.
* You can be inspired by your own experiences. Ideas I had about Vikings and dragons during summer holidays when I was 9 years old became 12 books, and a film and TV series. I had a slightly unusual childhood (I spent my summers on an uninhabited Scottish Island), but the world we all live in is full of extraordinary, wonderful idea for stories. You only have to watch an episode of Blue Planet to see that’s true.
* I always begin my stories with a map of my imaginary place. Lots of other authors have done the same – Robert Louis Stevenson drew a map of Treasure Island before starting to write. This is a really easy way of thinking about characters and setting.
* Often kids say to be that they aren’t very good at writing, but I know that’s not true – what they’re struggling with is the mechanics of getting the words onto paper. If you can make up a game in the playground, or you tell your friends stories, you can be an author! Get an adult to write or type for you, if you need to.
* Keep an ideas notebook so you can scribble down ideas and drawings. This doesn’t need to be neat, and no one should be correcting it for spelling, because spelling doesn’t matter. I kept an sketchbook for The Wizards of Once for about 5 years.
More About Cressida Cowell
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