How To Train Your Dragon (book series)

novel series by Cressida Cowell

The How To Train Your Dragon books also called the Hiccup books are a series of children’s books by Cressida Cowell. They begin with How To Train Your Dragon and end with How To Fight a Dragon’s Fury. There are twelve of them.

Books in the Series

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1) How To Train Your Dragon

2) How To Be a Pirate

3) How To Speak Dragonese

4) How To Cheat a Dragon’s Curse

5) How To Twist a Dragon’s Tale

6) A Hero’s Guide To Deadly Dragons

7) How To Ride a Dragon’s Storm

8) How To Break a Dragon’s Heart

9) How To Steal a Dragon’s Sword

10) How To Seize a Dragon’s Jewel

11) How To Betray a Dragon’s Hero

12) How To Fight a Dragon’s Fury

Storyline

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A Viking child named Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, whose father Stoick the Vast is leader of the tribe of the Hairy Hooligans, has to learn how to become a hero “the hard way”. Hiccup, with the help of his pet dragon Toothless and his friends Fishlegs and Camicazi has to save his home island called Berk (and the other islands of the Archipelago) from dangerous Dragons, pirates, Romans and evil Vikings like Norbert the Nutjob and Alvin the Treacherous. Hiccup and his friends also have to stop Alvin the Treacherous (Hiccup’s archenemy) and the Seadragon Furious from starting a war between humans and dragons.

Movie Adaptation

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In 2010, DreamWorks Animation made the movie How To Train Your Dragon based on the first book. The movie and its sequels are very different from the books.

Book to Movie Differences

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In the first book, Hiccup is ten and a half years old though in the sixth book A Hero’s Guide to Deadly Dragons, Hiccup turns twelve (technically three because he is born in a Leap year on February 29th). Hiccup in the movies starts out as a teenager. The movies also make Toothless a dragon big enough to ride and who has teeth. The movies also made it so that none of the dragons talked and they had none of the villains from the books. They also replaced Camicazi with a character named Astrid who is in the same tribe as Hiccup. And they made it that Vikings hunt and kill dragons until Hiccup convinces them to train the dragons instead of dragon-training being something kids always have to do or be banished.