Author

Cressida Cowell

Cressida Cowell (Author)

Cressida Cowell is the author and the illustrator of the globally bestselling How to Train Your Dragon series. Her next series, The Wizards of Once, was an international bestseller. Cressida is also the author of the Emily Brown picture books, illustrated by Neal Layton. The Which Way series is her most recent and has already been translated into 15 languages.

How to Train Your Dragon has sold over 8 million books worldwide in 42 languages. It is also an award-winning DreamWorks film series, and a TV series shown on Netflix and CBBC. The Wizards of Once has been translated into 38 languages and also signed by DreamWorks.

Cressida was the Waterstones Children's Laureate (2019-2022). She is an ambassador for the National Literacy Trust and the Reading Agency and a founder patron of the Children's Media Foundation. She has won numerous prizes for her books, including the Gold Award in the Nestle Children's Book Prize, the Hay Festival Medal for Fiction, and Philosophy Now' magazine's 2015 Award for Contributions in the Fight Against Stupidity.

She grew up in London and on a small, uninhabited island off the west coast of Scotland and she now lives in Hammersmith with her husband, three children and a dog called Pigeon.

Neal Layton (Illustrator)

Neal is an award-winning illustrator and author of children's books. He has worked on more than 80 titles to date, working with authors such Cressida Cowell and Michael Rosen, and won several prizes including a Gold Award in the Nestle Children's Book Prize for That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown. His books have also been shortlisted for the Red House Book Awards, the Blue Peter Book Awards, the Booktrust Early Years Award, Funfzig Jahre Deutcher Jugendliteraturpreis and New York Public Library's annual list of Best Children's Books.He also writes his own books, such as eco-picture book A Planet Full of Plastic and 'The Invincible Tony Spears' fiction series. His books are currently in print in more than 16 languages worldwide. He lives in Portsmouth with his wife and two daughters.