Cressida Cowell is the current Waterstones Children’s Laureate and author of numerous hit children’s books, including How To Train Your Dragon - which was turned into a huge Hollywood movie franchise - and The Wizards of Once, among many others.

She recently wrote an open letter to prime minister Boris Johnson - co-signed by numerous other high-profile children’s writers - calling for more ring-fenced funding for school libraries as part of her Life-changing Libraries project.

She spoke to Tes about her school days, the great teachers she remembers - particularly how their lesson prompts may have helped inspire some of her greatest creations - and why her rallying call to properly fund school libraries matters so much.

1. Do you remember your time at primary school well?

I went to an all-girls primary in Hammersmith, called Bute House. I’ve got very clear memories of [being there] and of being a child. I think remembering what it was like to be a child is absolutely key for a children’s book writer.

2. Are those memories happy ones?

I have mixed memories. There are definitely very positive memories and there were wonderful things about the school - the teaching was interesting and inspirational - but it was pressured and I was often in trouble.

I was a very disorganised little girl. I felt a bit stressed because I wasn’t a naturally schooly-type child, I would say, despite being very smart [laughs].

I was interested in learning and I was a huge reader but I really struggled with organisation, and I was so profoundly disorganised that I was constantly in trouble.

3. Is there a primary teacher you recall with fondness?

There was a wonderful teacher called Miss Mellows - it sounds like a Roald Dahl teacher, doesn’t it? - and she was my teacher in Year 3.

She did something that was very key for me. My spelling was terrible and my handwriting was appalling but she let me have a special book where I could write and, in that one book, the handwriting and the spelling didn’t matter.

I was about 7 or 8, and it was the first time I realised that I was a writer - that there was something important beyond the handwriting and spelling.

4. That sounds like it was a pivotal moment for you...

I had automatically assumed that the kid in the class who had the best handwriting was going to be the writer because that was what it seemed to be all about.

But with Miss Mellows, I was suddenly allowed to have this book where I could pour out my ideas, and Miss Mellows was reading them and was interested in the content of what I was doing rather than the mechanics, which I struggled with.

5. How did you find the move to secondary school?

I very enthusiastic about everything - I was really keen to learn! I loved biology - I was fascinated by how the human body worked - and history and Latin, I adored Latin.

[But] I wasn’t naturally good at maths or any of the [other] sciences, and I got in much more trouble in secondary for not handing things in on time and not knowing which lessons I was in, and that was really difficult and made me very unhappy. But I loved the actual learning.

6. Were there any teachers who were important to you?

I had a wonderful history teacher called Ms McDonald, who used to set projects like “imagine you are a Viking” - well, you can imagine what fun I had with that!

And she was more understanding if I handed something in three weeks late but it was practically a whole story. There seemed to be more flexibility in you being able to do these kinds of things because, of course, there were no exams for that - but that was where I got my real inspiration from.

7. Did you ever act in any plays at school?

Yes, I loved acting. I loved performing. And that’s actually part of my job now as well. I mean, you’re still sort of performing when you’re writing a book because I imagine it being read aloud.

At secondary school, we did Oh, What a Lovely War! and that was so moving because a whole load of 16- and 17-year-olds [in the play] were the same age as the children who were dying on the battlefront. All the adults were sobbing when they watched that one.

8. You chose to move school at 16 for your A levels. Why was that?

I left St Paul’s [Girls’ School] at 16 because, although it was a place that really taught you to think for yourself, it was very academic and what was valued, I felt, were the sciences and the professions. Art, which was a subject I was very interested in, didn’t feel particularly valued.

An example of this was that I wanted to take art, history of art, English and history at A level, and they said I was an academic child so I shouldn’t be studying art [because] it wasn’t an academic subject.

And so I thought for myself and I moved to a school - to Marlborough College - that did think art was important. I studied the same subjects, and there, art was at the heart of the school - a third of the children took art at A level.

And there, I met another teacher called Robin Child, who was incredibly inspiring.

9. You’ve begun a campaign to boost primary school libraries. Why is that so important?

We’ve known for decades that the two key factors in a kid’s later economic success, let alone their happiness, are reading for pleasure and parental involvement in education. And that cuts across all socioeconomic backgrounds.

But how can a kid read for pleasure if their parents can’t afford books, if there isn’t a public library or they can’t go to the public library, and there isn’t a library in their primary school? It’s just an impossibility.

The latest report on school library provision in primary schools shows that children on free school meals are twice as likely to be in a school without a library. How does that make sense?

So [as part of the Life-changing Libraries project] I’ve asked for £100 million a year [to invest in primary school libraries]. It sounds a lot but it isn’t, in the grand scheme of things - £300 million pounds a year is ring-fenced for sport [in schools].

10. What else is the Life-changing Libraries project doing?

I’m setting up six school libraries in six very different primary schools to showcase what a reading-for-pleasure culture can do. We’re hoping to collate the research from the six primary school libraries that we’ve set up in these amazing “gold standard” libraries to show what an effect it has not only on people’s educational attainment but also their mental wellbeing and their happiness.

Cressida Cowell was speaking to Dan Worth, senior editor at Tes

This article originally appeared in the 25 June 2021 issue