Cressida Cowell (Author)
Cressida Cowell is the author and the illustrator of the bestselling How to Train Your Dragon book series, and the author of the Emily Brown picture books, illustrated by Neal Layton.
How to Train Your Dragon has sold over 8 million books worldwide in 38 languages. It is also an award-winning DreamWorks film series, and a TV series shown on Netflix and CBBC. The first book in Cressida's new series, The Wizards of Once (also signed by DreamWorks), is a number one bestseller.
Cressida 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)
Many of Neal's ideas come from his childhood, and now he's grown up, from being a parent. He has illustrated more than 60 books to date, working with authors such as Michael Rosen and Cressida Cowell, and won several prizes including a Gold Award for 'That Rabbit belongs to Emily Brown'. He also writes his own books including the pop-up book'The Story of Everything' and the best selling 'Mammoth Academy Series'. His books are currently in print in more that 16 languages worldwide. He now lives in Southsea, Portsmouth with his wife and two daughters. He likes living by the seaside.
