Cressida Cowell grew up mostly in Central London. She has a B.A. in English Literature from Oxford, a B.A. in Graphic Design from St Martin's and an M.A. 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. This was followed by various picture books including HICCUP: THE VIKING WHO WAS SEASICK, published in 2000. Hiccup the Viking returned in Cressida's first novel for eight to twelve year olds, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, pubished to popular and critical acclaim in 2003. HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON has now been published in 27 languages. The following novels in the series, HOW TO BE A PIRATE and HOW TO SPEAK DRAGONESE, have proved equally popular, and a fourth title, HOW TO CHEAT A DRAGON'S CURSE, was published in November 2006. HOW TO TWIST A DRAGON'S TALE will be published in Autumn this year and A HERO'S GUIDE TO DEADLY DRAGONS is planned for 2008.

Film rights in the Hiccup series have been optioned to Dreamworks.

Cressida finds illustrating her own work satisfying, but she also loves writing books for other people to illustrate as the end result can be so unexpected and inspiring. Her picture book THAT RABBIT BELONGS TO EMILY BROWN, illustrated by Neil Layton, was winner of 5 and Under category of the Nestle Children's Book Prize 2006. Cressida and Neil have returned with a sequel, EMILY BROWN AND THE THING, which will be published in Autumn this year.

Cressida lives in Hammersmith with her husband, three children, and two cats.

Delve into this special volume of Hiccup's memoirs to find a brand new exciting adventure, a detailed map of the Archipelago and lots more dragon profiles!

Also contains a comprehensive Dragonese Dictionary for those who'd like to dragon-whisper as well as the dragon-whisperer himself.