How
To Train Your Dragon
This book is about the adventures of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III,
the ten-year-old son of a Viking chief, who must capture a dragon for a
rite of passage. Set on the Island of Berk, a group of 10 youths of the
Hooligan tribe are being led by "Gobber the Belch" to perform their
first military operation; to catch their own dragon. Those who are not
able to catch and train a dragon are exiled from the tribe. This
military operation has to be done by every Hooligan.
The storyline starts building up when Hiccup notices his dragon is
incredibly small. Gobber advises the youths to train their dragons by
using the How
to Train Your Dragon book from the Hooligan Library. However, the
book has only a single page saying, "yell at it; the louder the
better." This does not help at all for Hiccup, who can barely yell, so
he has to find another way to train his dragon. He first tries yelling,
which fails. He then puts together a list of supposed characteristics
of dragons that can be used in training. The list also fails and,
despite the insistence by Fishlegs that it will not work, he resorts to
pampering his dragon.
Since how to train your dragon is the first book out of these series:
[(Hiccup
the Seasick Viking (2000) Children's picture book, How to Be a
Pirate (2004), How to Speak Dragonese (2005), How to Cheat a Dragon's
Curse (2006), How to Twist a Dragon's Tale (2007), A Hero's Guide to
Deadly Dragons (2008), How to Ride a Dragon's Storm (2008), How to Break
a Dragon's Heart (2009)]. The
film was created as an epic re-telling of the first book in the
series. As such, there are numerous differences between the two media.
These include a new plot, minor and major character changes, as well as
a few adjustments to the overall setting. The greatest change is that
the Vikings in the book have the custom of capturing and training
dragons even before the story begins - but in the film, they are
fighting a fierce war against the dragons and only switch to training
them after Hiccup shows that this can be done. However, Cowell stated in
her blog that she felt approvingly that the film remained "true to the
spirit and message of the book." Cowell also explained that she felt
that the changing of media (novel to film) triggered a necessary change
in plot and characters.
