Join our community to get personalised book suggestions, extracts straight to your inbox, 10% off RRPs, and to change children’s lives. Her art, too, is funny -- including pages from a book of spells and scribbled-in text that comments wryly on the action. They now have all the ingredients of the spell that is supposed to Get Rid of Witches and they are on their way to challenge the terrifying Kingwitch who is confined in a ball of iron. Cressida Cowell grew up in London and on a small, uninhabited island off the west coast of Scotland.

And I’ll think ‘oh, well, it might have been a bit colder end of the bronze ages, beginning of the Iron Ages… so I’ll make my giant lynxes look like ordinary lynxes but much bigger. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. The book is engagingly written with humorous illustrations and sketches adding to the flavour and vividness of the writing. The kids have to deal with parents who are deeply disappointed, as well as a raft of annoying, constricting rules.

So much better to let kids come to their own conclusions once you've gently pointed them in the right direction.

Her books are a gift and children, parents, carers, and teachers should all be deeply grateful for it. Both Xar and Wish have recognizable and relatable human flaws, but are brave and curious and active. Youngest son of Encanzo the Enchanter, King of Wizards, Xar is rebellious, brave, has a heart of gold and is determined to prove himself. We caught up with her to find out how she ended up writing her books and where she gets her inspiration from.Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. This is the final instalment in the How to Train Your Dragon series and it packs an emotional punch. Subsequent generations had obviously seen these incredible fortifications and thought they couldn’t have been built by human beings, they must have been built by giants.

It’s a time of real magic: magic that is despised by the warrior tribe, whose very fierce leader (Wish’s mother Queen Sychorax) has sworn to remove from the world. Common Sense is the nation's leading nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of all kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in the 21st century. Will you find the ingredients for the Spell to get rid of Witches and uncover the location of the Cup of Second Chances?

Every year, Cressida’s family spent four weeks of the summer, and two weeks of the spring, on the island.

There are lots of wonderful stories about how on certain nights the trees would run red with blood because of the Viking ghosts. The omniscient narrator's voice is pitch-perfect, sounding appropriately young without ever talking down to the target audience. In this whirlwind adventure, Xar and Wish must forget their differences if they're going to make it to the dungeons at Warrior Fort. Not the Norse myths this time, but a fantasia of ancient Britain, a land of dark, mysterious forests and powerful magic.

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. 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. So four hundred years of that part of the world is filled with Viking stories and Viking history and my interest descended from there.