What is the title of the first book in Cressida Cowell’s How to Train Your Dragon series?

The first book in Cressida Cowell’s series is titled How to Train Your Dragon.

Published in 2003, the novel introduces Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III and begins the children’s book series that later inspired DreamWorks Animation’s film franchise. The books and films share names and broad character ideas, but their plots, designs, relationships, and tone are substantially different.

In Cowell’s book, Hiccup is a young Viking who must learn how to train a dragon as part of his education. The series uses comic narration, illustrations, invented Viking history, and a much larger collection of dragons and characters than the films. Later book titles include How to Be a Pirate and How to Speak Dragonese. The first film is therefore an adaptation rather than a direct scene-by-scene version of the novel. Cressida Cowell wrote and illustrated the original book series, which concluded with How to Train Your Dragon: How to Fight a Dragon’s Fury in 2015.