The Wizards of Once: Book 1

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sustain a sense of wonder and mayhem from start to finish. Cowell skillfully mixes adventure with silliness in a satisfying story for younger fantasy fans. Publishers Weekly This is the story of a young boy Wizard and a young girl Warrior who have been taught since birth to hate each other like poison; and the thrilling tale of what happens when their two worlds collide. Perfect for boys and girls who love fantasy adventure... Without giving away the ending in a review, which is a difficult task, all that can be said is that this is a wonderful series to be savoured by fans of How To Train Your Dragon.

Cressida wrote and illustrated her first picture book, Little Bo Peep’s Library Book, for Hodder Children’s Books in 1998. Her first novel for eight to twelve year olds, How to Train Your Dragon, was published to popular and critical acclaim in 2003: ‘The next big thing in children’s literature,’ wrote The Independent on Sunday. ‘Irresistibly funny, exciting and endearing,’ said The Times. Both Xar and Wish have recognizable and relatable human flaws, but are brave and curious and active. Wish is an active girl protagonist. Though both have parents who are disapproving, the kids follow their own lights and prove their mettle. Though they start out enemies, they are open to each other and become loyal friends. Adventures are fun and can bring out the best in you. Misfits can grow into their power, and can earn the respect of their parents and others. People who seem to be enemies may have good qualities and end up being allies.

LoveReading4Kids Says

It was also the incredible Iron Age hill forts. All of Britain is covered in extraordinary history: thousands and thousands of years of people living in our incredible landscape. Trundle Hill, for example, and Maiden Castle are Iron Age hillforts. Subsequent generations had obviously seen these incredible fortifications and thought they couldn’t have been built by human beings, they must have been built by giants. So there were a lot of legends in that countryside about giants living there. And so I sort of mixed them all up together… the incredible wild woods, the stories about the giants and the fairies that were all made up by people who lived after the Iron Ages, and I put them all together into Wizards of Once. But he's not afraid of the spell at all. In fact, he wants them to come... and that is not a good sign! Xar's little companion Squeezjoos is in terrible danger and badly needs saving.

I always begin my stories with a map of my imaginary place. Lots of other authors have done the same – Robert Louis Stevenson drew a map of Treasure Island before starting to write. This is a really easy way of thinking about characters and setting.

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Exciting and thrilling with lots if action. Some of the characters are really funny and have lots of crazy ideas. . . like Zar trying to catch a witch. Children's author Cressida Cowell scoops philosophers' award for fight against stupidity". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 June 2017. An exciting and promising start... A fantastical adventure ensues, filled with mythical beasts, cliff-hangers and an epic struggle between good and evil The Scotsman Families can talk about the family relationships in The Wizards of Once. How do Xar and Wish feel about their dad and mom? Do your parents ever expect you to be or do something you're not able to?

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world. - Albert Einstein Oh I love all of these different time periods. I am very drawn to the distant past, partly because when it’s the dark ages I can make up what we don’t know! There’s so much that we don’t know and I find that astonishingly exciting. Keep an ideas notebook so you can scribble down ideas and drawings. This doesn’t need to be neat, and no one should be correcting it for spelling, because spelling doesn’t matter. I kept an sketchbook for The Wizards of Once for about 5 years. For Wizards of Once, I was wanting to have a personification of evil magic. And I just couldn’t think of a better word than ‘witch’ because it carries such weight. The word ‘witch’… suddenly you’re thinking of the witches in The Wizard of Oz, for example. Because we’ve got such a history of believing in terrifying witches in the past, I think it’s the associations that that word carries. I was very careful to make the witches both male and female because I don’t approve of how witches are often made out to be only female! I could have gone another way but that’s what I chose the witches to personify.In a similar sort of way, if I’m trying to make you believe that my giant snow cats are real, I will do research into what a lynx might look like. And I’ll think ‘oh, well, it might have been a bit colder end of the bronze ages, beginning of the Iron Ages… so I’ll make my giant lynxes look like ordinary lynxes but much bigger. And those Canadian lynxes with soft fur like powder snow’. We caught up with her to find out how she ended up writing her books and where she gets her inspiration from. Plus, she gives us her expert tips on writing and illustrating. Wish is a girl from a warrior tribe and Xar is a boy from a wizard tribe, living in a world loosely based on Ancient Britain at the beginning of the Iron Age.