We chat to Cressida Cowell, author of everyone’s favourite How to Train Your Dragon series about her new ‘out-of-this-world’ book, Which Way to Anywhere. Packed full of imagination and adventure, it’s the perfect kid’s read over Christmas.

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Which Way to Anywhere is just bursting with imagination! What inspired you?

I wrote the first lines of Which Way to Anywhere 25 years ago, before I’d even started writing How to Train Your Dragon. I still have the pages of spidery longhand. It’s been living and growing with me all that time, for this is a BIG story, set in not just one world but many, not just about one person, but an entire family and it needed time to develop.

For you see, I think that stories have a life of their own. They find YOU, just as much as you find THEM. For twenty five years they can lie quiet in your shed, until the story flies up, like a bird, finding you at just the right moment.

This story found me at a very difficult time, just after my father died and at the start of the pandemic.

This is when the story in my shed came to life. Flying towards me on a sort-of rescue mission, at a time when we were all suddenly, in our little family units, facing something larger than all of us. It felt like the right time to be writing a book about some children searching for their lost father and an entire family trying to rebuild itself, and the great challenges facing the whole of humanity and to be celebrating the power of human creativity in facing those challenges.

And where did you get the inspiration for the amazing cast of siblings? 

I was inspired by sibling relationships within my own family and my children say I am rather like Izzabird, one of the children in the book – slightly out of control! Family dynamics, in which an older brother, like Theo, has a tendency to be over protective of his younger sister Mabel, or K2 allows himself to be dominated by his twin Izzabird, I think will feel familiar to young readers.

Do you have a soft spot for any of the siblings? 

I do have a soft spot for the baby Annipeck because I haven’t written a baby before and she’s the one who unites the blended family. But I love them all, it’s really tricky to choose. I love Mabel’s kindness, K2’s creativity, Theo’s invention and Izzabird’s spirit.

What is the most interesting space fact you learned while writing? 

That scientists really do believe that there is life on other planets and that it might not be so different from life on our own, because often creatures evolve in similar ways.

Recent scientific research postulates that life on other planets might not be so very different from our own, because it would have to obey the physical laws of the universe and certain conditions have to be in place for life to exist.

Do you have a favourite world or planet and why? 

Our own. I do a lot of research for my fantasy books because it helps your world-building feel authentic. So, for Which Way to Anywhere, I did research into luminous snakes, for example, and incredible venus fly traps. A lot of my dragons from How to Train Your Dragon are inspired by real animals and a running theme throughout all of my work is looking after the environment and the wonder of the natural world. We live on an extraordinary planet.

Are there any lessons to be learned from the story? 

The importance of looking after the world around us; that the real magic is creativity, which we all have within us; empathy – ‘walking around in somebody else’s skin’ as it says in To Kill a Mockingbird.

What do you most want children to think and feel about the book? 

I want child to find it a funny, exciting adventure story, but I also want to make them think and I want to encourage them to write and create themselves. Most of all, I want to get them to love reading the same way that I loved reading when I was a kid. It’s a lot to pack in…   

It’s an interesting look into step-sibling relationships. Is there any particular message about that? 

Families are rarely simple and they’re not always harmonious. I wanted to write a family story where everyone learns to work together. I was also aware that some of my readers will be in step-families and it’s great to represent that in a book.

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Cressida Cowell’s amazing new book, Which Way to Anywhere, is out now! Get ahead for Christmas and buy your copy today.