The Wizards of Once: Book 1

Product Information

Set deep in an enchanting forest, this is a charming story full of Cowell’s trade mark humour and total command of mystery and magic and how it fits seamlessly into everyday life. Cressida Cowell is a gifted author with a real talent for taking her readers right inside her fantasy worlds. I am very drawn to the distant past, partly because when it’s the dark ages I can make up what we don’t know!

I read up a lot about that time period, which I’ve never written about but I find the history incredibly inspiring. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. I was already writing about Vikings because of Scotland and my childhood in Scotland, which of course was the first place the Vikings invaded when they invaded Great Britain and the last place they left. 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.

Cressida wrote and illustrated her first picture book, Little Bo Peep’s Library Book, for Hodder Children’s Books in 1998.

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. The information on this site is aimed primarily at parents, educators, reviewers and retailers and you must be over the age of 13 to subscribe to our newsletter.If you can make up a game in the playground, or you tell your friends stories, you can be an author! I love that history, about which we know some but there’s a lot that we don’t know… it’s very fragmentary. Cowell attended Keble College, Oxford where she studied English, and she also attended Saint Martin's School of Art and Brighton University where she learned illustration. They are being hunted right across the Wildwoods by fellow Warriors, Wizards and, worst of all, Witches.

Cressida Cowell presently resides in London [11] with her husband Simon, a former director and interim CEO of the International Save the Children Alliance; daughters Maisie and Clementine; and son Alexander. 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. When the two young protagonists sneak out of their respective royal residences and meet, their fates become intertwined. Without ever losing the qualities that have made her books so deservedly popular, very gently (and cleverly) Cressida Cowell leads her young readers into something deeper, something richer, something even more magical. Wish and Xar’s quest to find the ingredients for the Spell to Get Rid of Witches will be terrifying and treacherous, and somebody close will even betray them!

Because we’ve got such a history of believing in terrifying witches in the past, I think it’s the associations that that word carries. Knock Three Timesis thrilling, fast-paced, funny, sad, scary and philosophical, and full of inspiration for children on how to find inner strength in crisis. Fans of How To Train Your Dragon who have been waiting for Cressida Cowell's new series will not be disappointed. The book bristles with rambunctious energy and humour, and feels as if it has been slapped down on the page with glee and mischief.

It's all so thrilling and by now we know the characters so well that we're terribly proud of them and worried for them. Will you find the ingredients for the Spell to get rid of Witches and uncover the location of the Cup of Second Chances? She was my history teacher in upper 4M and she set me a history essay task which was ‘imagine you see Vikings on the horizon’. bristles with rambunctious energy and humour, and feels as if it has been slapped down on the page with glee and mischief.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. I think this is one reason why Cowell is so popular - there is a trust between author and reader that both feel and respect.