
“It sounds very unlikely, but it’s based on my own childhood,” reflects Cowell, “and the Isle of Berk is a real place where I grew up as a child. Stoick the Vast is based on my relationship with my father. Of course, the ending, ‘There were dragons when I was a boy,’ are the opening words of the books that I wrote 20 years ago when I just had a child. I tell the story from the point of view of the boy growing up, looking back to my own childhood, and Hiccup is a father to Toothless. The themes are so enmeshed with my own life that it’s incredibly bittersweet.”