This series of books runs well beyond the five books reviewed below. I think the two series have similar appeal. I plan to give these books to a kid who was a big fan of Ian Ogilvy’s Measle Stubbs series.
Illustrated with whimsical crudeness suggesting the diary of a wimpy kid in the Dark Ages, the books offer a blend of rambunctious humor, adventure, diabolical wit, and a light touch of sentimentality that will win over many kids entering the “independent reader” stage. His memoirs have only recently been translated from the Old Norse by an Englishwoman named Cressida Cowell, whose husband Simon is apparently unrelated to the TV personality of the same name. Officially, the How to Train Your Dragon series was authored by a Viking hero named Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, who lived some 1,500 years ago on an island called Berk. Only now do I realize how very, very little the original book and its sequels have in common with the movie. If I had known then what I know now, I might have been unfairly prejudiced against a fine piece of motion-picture entertainment. Perhaps it’s just as well that I hadn’t read the book it was supposedly based on. I thought then, and I still think, that it was a very good movie. Not too long ago, I saw the animated film How to Train Your Dragon.
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