Friday, October 16, 2015

Book Review: How to Train Your Dragon

How to Train Your Dragon
by  Cressida Cowel
Date Read:  10/15/15
Rating: ★ ★ 
★ ★  ★ 

I will first start by saying this book is nothing like the movie.  The movie basically took the names and the very broad concept of training dragons and that is it.  Well, I guess it also still made Hiccup a misfit, just for different reasons.

I listened to this as an audiobook, and I really enjoyed it.  The guy who read it had a great accent that just added to the story – you really got wrapped up in the Viking lore and such.  There were times where he would do the yelling parts though and it hurt my ears!  Haha.

This book focuses more on the “training your dragon” aspect of the story, which the movie briefly touched on in subduing the dragons.  I really liked the part when Hiccup read the book “How to Train Your Dragon” with all the credits and such, and then opened the body and it just read “Yell at it”. It made me laugh pretty hard.  Silly Vikings thinking they can just yell and control things.

Hiccup had to learn a different way to train his unusually small (and toothless) dragon.  I liked that the dragon language was called “Dragonese”…how cute!  Though, I wonder how Hiccup learned it if no one else in the tribe spoke it…

While Hiccup wasn’t the strongest or have the largest presence, you could still tell he was brave and leader material when he gave his first dragon to Fishlegs and had to go back to get himself another dragon while thousands of dragons were chasing them out of the cave.

Then the Green death, giant sea dragon, appeared on their shores and Hiccup and the others had to show their warrior strengths. 

One very different thing between the book and the movie was that the dragons talk in the book!  Well, that’s because Hiccup can speak Dragonese.  Toothless actually talked with a weird little stutter. I’m not sure if it’s just because he has a stutter or because he was still an infant dragon. Either way it took some getting used to, but he was so darn cute…even when he was making silly comments.

I also enjoyed the dragon scoring at the beginning of the book. I thought it was a nice touch in the movie that they put a scene in there where one of the kids scores the giant dragon they were fighting.  It was a lot of fun.


Overall this book was very entertaining.  This would be a great book to read to kids at bedtime, even if they love the movie.  Both have great stories, and you’ll still love Hiccup and Toothless in both versions!

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