In this text I wrote about the book ‘How To Train Your Dragon’ by Cressida Cowell. My focus was a comparison between the book and the movie. I took care not to give too much information and end up spoiling the fun of those who intend to appreciate either of these works.

I’d appreciate if you could correct my text giving special attention to punctuation. Thank you in advance.

I would like to begin by saying that the book and the movie are so different from one another that one can regard them as two independent stories, sharing only the name.

Firstly, in the movie, Toothless, which is Hiccup’s dragon, in case you don’t know, is a Night Fury. This is a kind of extremely powerful dragon, being feared even by the bravest Vikings. However, in the first book, Toothless is a Common or Garden, the most ordinary kind of dragon. And he is also green, not black. To complicate Hiccup’s social status even more, Toothless is also really small, even for its kind of dragon.

From about half the first movie on, Hiccup starts riding on Toothless, but, according to the book description, the dragon is to small to be ridden on. Actually, Toothless is usually either perched on Hiccup’s viking helmet, or inside his clothes.

If you have seen the movie, you may remember that Vikings and dragons were mortal enemies, with the teenage Vikings being trained on how to kill them. In the book, from the first page on, Vikings domesticate dragons to use them in hunting, fishing, and at war. That is where the book’s name comes from: how to train your dragon.

When it comes to the women/girls we also have some contradictions. The first one is that Hiccup’s mother is present from the beginning of the book, whereas in the movie she is considered deceased. And the second one is Astrid, Hiccup’s future girlfriend, or rather the lack of any Astrid, since there is no girl with this name in the whole book. In another book from the same series, Hiccup does come to know a girl called Camicazi, which becomes one of his best friends, along with a boy called Fishlegs.

There are two more things I want to comment. In the movie Hiccup and his dragon interact as a boy would interact with a dog: by watching its behavior and playing with it, but never having a conversation. In the book dragons can speak dragonese, and Hiccup is one of the few humans who speak it. So, Hiccup and Toothless talk to each other, although Toothless’ sentence building skills are those of a young dragon, and not quite right.

The last point is, in my opinion, what has the biggest impact on the understanding of the story. If you have seen the movies, you will remember how each new movie is clearly a sequel to the story presented in all the previous ones. Now, if you read the books, you do not even need to read them in any particular order, because they are each one considered a “full story within itself”. It means that most characters – read ‘the adults Vikings’ - act as if the events from the other books have not occurred, which may make the reader upset with so many characters repeating the sames mistakes over and over. Just to be fair, keep in mind that this series is meant for children, which, at least partially, justifies this discontinuous way of telling a story for the sake of simplicity.

Almost forgot… in the book Toothless has its name because he is toothless.