Cressida Cowell's How to Train Your Dragon School spin-off series snagged by Hachette Children's Group

Ten years after the last in Cressida Cowell’s 12-novel How to Train Your Dragon series was published, a new stand-alone spin-off series featuring Hiccup and Toothless is on its way. 

Hachette Children’s Group (UK) and Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (US) have acquired the first two books in the new How to Train Your Dragon School series, with rights having been acquired in a “significant” deal. 

Hachette Children’s senior trade publisher Ruth Alltimes acquired world rights, excluding the US, and Little, Brown’s senior editor Liz Kossnar acquired US rights from Veronique Baxter at David Higham Associates.   

Cowell’s titles have sold over 16 million copies worldwide in 46 languages. 

The first of the new series, How to Train Your Dragon School: Doom of the Darkwing, will be published on 8th May 2025 in paperback. The US will publish Doom of the Darkwing in July 2025 in hardback and paperback simultaneously. Book two will be published in 2026. 

The series follows Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, and his dragons Toothless and Windwalker, as they join the Viking and Dragon Training School on the Isle of Berk.  

A new live-action How to Train Your Dragon film is set for release by DreamWorks on 13th June 2025, and an ‘Isle of Berk’ theme park attraction is launching in Orlando, Florida, in May next year. Hachette Children’s will also publish a film tie-in edition of the first How to Train Your Dragon book. 

Alltimes said: “It’s been a decade since the last How to Train Your Dragon full-length novel, and fans (including my own children) have not stopped asking for another. How to Train Your Dragon School has Cressida’s characteristic wit, heart and adventure, and features all the favourite characters, often discovering in the most wonderful of ways that sometimes the lesson you’re learning isn’t the one you think it is."

She added: “This is a momentous year for Dragon, and we’re planning a fiery, large-scale promotional campaign to match it. It’s a privilege to be Cressida’s editor: she’s had a truly global impact as a creator, and we’re so incredibly lucky to have her here in the UK—and at Hachette Children’s.” 

Kossnar said: “Dragons have long dominated the bestseller lists, but none have lit the world on fire like Cressida Cowell’s How to Train Your Dragon. The time is smouldering for How to Train Your Dragon School, a perfectly crafted series to fulfil the demands of today’s young readers while also captivating beloved fans. I am thrilled to be joining forces to give this launch an international push.” 

Cowell said: “I could not be more excited about the incredible new live action film of How to Train Your Dragon coming out next year, and the astonishing ‘Isle of Berk’ theme park attraction which is launching in Orlando, Florida. As a book writer and illustrator, I am always thinking of the ways that these hugely visible entry points into the world of How to Train Your Dragon can lead children into reading. Children are such visual thinkers, so I’ve packed this first book full of illustration and fun, as well as all the detail and story progression that fans have been asking me about.”