In the Studio: Cressida Cowell

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2024

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Enter the magical world of children’s writer Cressida Cowell. She created the hugely successful How to Train Your Dragon series, which continues to excite children across the globe and has been turned into Oscar nominated animated films. For her latest series, Cressida explores teenage magic and Iron Age warriors. As she works on the illustrations for the second book in this new trilogy, The Wizards of Once: Twice Magic, she gives fellow children’s author Michael Rosen an insight into how she creates these worlds.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service.
0:04.4	In this edition, we're taking you back to 2018.
0:08.0	Put your hands together and give a massive whoop for Cressida Cowell.
0:19.0	Hi, I'm Cressida Cowell,
0:20.0	author and illustrator of the How to Train Your Dragon books and now my new series The Wizards of Once.
0:28.0	It feels so cool to be able to say that. I'm Michael Rosen. I'm a children's writer and poet and in this program I'm in the company of the popular British children's author and illustrator Kressida Cowle. Today she's taking time out from working on her
0:45.6	latest book, The Wizards of Once, Twice Magic, to go on stage at the unicorn theatre in London,
0:52.1	to talk about her work in front of a packed crowd of
0:54.6	excited school children for World Book Day, a worldwide celebration of books and reading that
1:00.8	takes place in over a hundred countries.
1:03.0	It's a very inconvenient time because I'm mid-deadline.
1:07.0	I'm desperately trying to finish the book and start the illustrations for number two in my series,
1:11.0	but it's worth it for World Book Day.
1:13.0	Cressitors' How to Train Your Dragon Books have sold over 8 million copies across the world
1:19.0	and been translated in 38 languages.
1:22.0	They've been turned into video games, a TV series, The Wizards of Once, she's turned her attention away from Dragons to another kind of fantasy, magic and warriors.
1:45.0	Wizard once is set in the Iron Age.
1:52.0	It's very exciting to write a new series after 15 years.
1:56.0	The Wizards of Once series tells the story of the Young Warrior Wish and her unlikely friend,
2:05.8	the Boy Wizard ZAR.
2:07.6	As they come together, accompanied by the likes of Sprites, giants, and Snowcats, they try to defeat the evil witches.
2:17.0	The reason that I'm a writer for children rather than adults is because for me
	...

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