Year Four visit author Cressida Cowell
Year Four visit author Cressida Cowell – A report by Class 4
On Wednesday September 23rd, Cressida Cowell, the well- known children’s author of the, ‘How to Train your Dragon’ series of books, gave an exciting and inspirational talk to Year Four pupils at Saffron Hall. Her aim was to encourage and motivate young writers.
Childhood adventures
As a child, Cressida enjoyed very unusual holidays. Each summer, her parents would take her and her brothers to a small remote island off the West coast of Scotland. There was no power on the island, no telephones and no houses or roads. Cressida thought her parents were crazy but she loved the freedom to explore the island and the sea. Once, she went out on a boat with her brothers, without any adults. Her six year old brother wanted to go diving so jumped off the boat holding a heavy rock so he would sink to the bottom of the harbour to catch a crab.
Vikings and Dragons!
Cressida’s father told her exciting stories about the time when Vikings and dragons lived on the island. She wondered what it would be like if Vikings and dragons still existed and started to draw pictures and write stories about them.
Top Tips to Young Writers
To make her dragons seem real, Cressida mixed facts about the extraordinary creatures she discovered such as giant lobsters and blob fishes. Cressida suggested that we wrote,’ Big fat Lies’ to convince our readers that the things we wrote about were real.
Cressida said that we shouldn’t worry about our handwriting as stories are all about ideas. She started to write little books at the age of nine and didn’t have her first book published until she was 32 so it’s never too late to start. Drawing a map of the story setting helps writers too.
If you haven’t read any exciting books by Cressida Cowell, we would definitely recommend them and we are keen to start writing.
