How to Train Your Dragon Book 6: A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons by Cressida Cowell

LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANYNew York Boston

by Cressida Cowell

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HOW NOT TO CELEBRATE YOUR

BIRTHDAY

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Once there were dragons.Imagine a time of DRAGONS — some larger

than mountainsides, slumbering in the depths of theocean; some smaller than your fingernail, hoppingthrough the heather.

Imagine a time of VIKING HEROES, inwhich men were men and women were sort of men,too, and even some little babies had chest hair.

And now imagine that you are a boy calledHiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, not yettwelve years old and not yet turning out to be thekind of Hero his father would have liked him to be.That boy, of course, was really ME, but the boy I wasthen seems so far away to me now that I shall tell thisstory almost as if he was a stranger.

So, imagine that instead of being me, thisstranger, this Hero-in-Waiting, is YOU.

You are small. You have red hair. You don’trealize it yet, but you are about to set out on the mostalarming episode of your life so far. . . . When you arean old, old man like I am you will call it How NOT toCelebrate Your Birthday — and even at this distancein time it will still cause your old wrinkled arms toprickle with goose bumps as you remember the perilsand dangers of that terrifying adventure. . . .

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1. AN ODD WAY TO SPENDYOUR BIRTHDAY

At exactly twelve o’clock on the afternoon of his twelfthbirthday, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, theHope and Heir to the Tribe of the Hairy Hooligans,was standing shakily on a windy, narrow window ledgethree hundred feet up in the air.

Hiccup was a rather ordinary-looking boy forsomeone with such a long and impressive name; asmallish, thinnish runner bean of a boy with bright redhair that shot straight up as if it was surprised, and aface that nobody ever remembered.

His knees were wobbling as he flattened himselfagainst the wall.

The window ledge that he was perching onbelonged to a Castle of terrifying size and spookinessthat sprawled like an ugly black monster on top of thegull-shrieking cliffs of the little Isle of Forget Me.

Although this Castle was known as THEMEATHEAD PUBLIC LIBRARY, it was not, in fact,open to the general public. This was back in Vikingtimes, when books were considered a highly dangerouscivilizing influence, so they were rounded up and kept

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locked up in the Library under heavyarmed guard. Entry to the Library was

strictly by invitation only.Hiccup had not been invited.

Which was why he wasthree hundred feet up in theair, and about to sneak inthrough an upstairs window.

What he was makinghere was definitely a surprisevisit. He REALLY,REALLY did not want

anyone to know he was there.If Hiccup looked down

(and he was trying very, veryhard not to) he could seethe tiny figures of hundreds

of Meathead Warrior Guardsmoving in the courtyardbelow, the sun glinting

wickedly off their metal-tipped Northbows, theirDriller Dragons on long

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chains beside them. Hiccup knew that they only had tolook up, and they would have no hesitation at all inshooting on sight.

Hiccup swallowed hard. He was getting the nerveup to climb through the broken window and into theLibrary — but he didn’t really want to do this, either.

Who knew WHAT could be hidden in that darkmaze of rooms, a labyrinth so huge that you could belost in there for weeks without a soul ever finding you?

Whatever else was in there, Hiccup knew thatsomewhere in that terrifying book warren thereprowled the Hairy Scary Librarian himself, the half-blind Guardian of the Library.

Master Swordsman, Mathematical Genius, andan all-around scary individual, the Hairy Scary Librarianshowed no mercy to Intruders.

Hiccup had heard him at gatherings of the Tribes,boasting of how he finished off foolish Warriors whodared to try and find out the Library’s secret with oneslash of his swords, which he called his Heart-Slicers.

“I croaks them with me Heart-Slicers,” he wouldwhisper with the firelight flickering in hisundead eyes. “I unzips them from their

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goggle-screams to their grub-washers.” Then he wouldmake a nasty swiping motion from his throat down to hisbelly button. “Serves them right — NOBODY borrowsbooks from MY Library and lives to tell the tale.”

And if the Hairy Scary Librarian was scary evenon a social occasion, when you were sitting down at acozy campfire with the rest of the Tribe all comfortablysettled around you, how much scarier was he still whenhe was doing his business, lurking like a spider aroundevery corner of his spooky Library, his Heart-Slicers atthe ready?

Particularly when, like Hiccup, you had come tothe Library not just to stroll about, but to actually STEALone of the precious books and take it home with you.

At that moment, a small wild dragon happened tofly past the spot where Hiccup was perching. Hiccupfollowed it automatically with his eyes. “Lesser-SpottedSquirrelserpent,” Hiccup said to himself. And as thelittle dragon soared, free and careless, with nothing todo and nowhere to go, into the bright blue sky, Hiccupthought to himself: What AM I doing? This is myBIRTHDAY, for Thor’s sake. I should be sitting at homeenjoying myself instead of risking my neck three hundred

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feet up in a Library of Doom. . . . What AM I DOING?HOW DID I GET MYSELF INTO THIS MESS INTHE FIRST PLACE? NOTHING could possibly beworse than this. . . .

And at that moment, Hiccup was so busy withthis thought and with watching the Lesser-SpottedSquirrelserpent wheeling through the air in a lazy arc,that he lost concentration, and his foot slipped on thecrumbly edge of the window. And with a smotheredshriek, he fell off the ledge.

He fell off the ledge entirely, armsand legs scrabbling wildly, and one flailinghand just caught onto the window ledge ashe fell . . . and held — leaving him hangingby one hand, with nothing between himand the hard ground but three hundredfeet of pure clear air.Hiccup screamed again.

Down below on thebattlements, the heads of four hundredMeathead Guards tipped upward to look. All fourhundred reached for their Northbows.

And, floating up to Hiccup as he swung from theledge with one hand, came the ominous sound of theDriller Dragons setting their drills a-whirring.

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Text and illustrations copyright © 2007 by Cressida Cowell

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no partof this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or byany means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior writtenpermission of the publisher.

Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017Visit our website at www.lb-kids.com

Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

First U.S. Trade Paperback Edition: August 2010First U.S. Hardcover Edition: August 2009First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Hodder Children’s Books

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to realpersons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

ISBN 978-0-316-11779-1 (hc) / 978-0-316-08532-8 (pb)

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RRD-C

Printed in the United States of America

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