Which Way to Anywhere: From the No.1 bestselling author of HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON

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K2 O’Hero is a seemingly ordinary boy from a truly extraordinary family – he and his twin sister Izzabird have been sworn to keep their family’s history of magical explorers a secret. Not even their infuriating stepsiblings, Theo and Mabel, know magic exists. They believe K2 to be the most hopeless person they have ever known. Lastly, I felt like all the loose ends were not wrapped up in a nice way. This was very much a first-in-the-series book. Even more so than Wizards of once.

Izzabird and Theo are fighting because they do not like their combined family, but we never find out why beyond that Izzabird thinks the Smiths are boring and Theo things the O’Hero’s are witches. But K2 has a secret gift: he draws maps of worlds that are beyond the wildest of imaginations. Worlds with six hundred moons, burning rivers and dark, twisty jungles alive with plants that hunt by the smell of fear. But what K2 doesn’t know, is that the maps he draws are real. So, hold on tight for a new adventure and dare to delve deep into the other-world of Which Way to Anywhere. This book would make the perfect escape this upcoming school holidays. https://www.waterstones.com/events/dragons-wizards-and-which-way-to-anywhere-with-cressida-cowell/newcastle When starting Wizards of Once I noticed plenty of similarities with How to train your dragon. The disapproving parents, the tiny creature that speaks in a funny way and the older family member that hates one of the main characters. Wish, Xar and the parents turned out unique because they reacted to the same things wildly differently. Xar shared Hiccup’s talent of talking himself out of trouble but used it as defense mechanism to hide his insecurities. Wish had Hiccup’s good heart but suffered from parent-induced emotional trauma. Bodkin’s fearfulness led him to be manipulated as opposed to Fishlegs’ unwavering loyalty.Magical worlds as only Cressida Cowell can. Just like The Wizards of Once series, this first book in the Which Way to Anywhere series is incredibly imaginative while this time linking into normal daily life and family matters with a blended family struggling to get along. You can be inspired by your own experiences. Ideas I had about Vikings and dragons during summer holidays when I was 9 years old became 12 books, and a film and TV series. I had a slightly unusual childhood (I spent my summers on an uninhabited Scottish Island), but the world we all live in is full of extraordinary, wonderful idea for stories. You only have to watch an episode of Blue Planet to see that’s true. LoveReading4Kids exists because books change lives, and buying books through LoveReading4Kids means you get to change the lives of future generations, with 25% of the cover price donated to schools in need. Join our community to get personalised book suggestions, extracts straight to your inbox, 10% off RRPs, and to change children’s lives.

Best-selling children’s author and former Children’s Laureate Cressida Cowell’s Which Way to Anywhere is a fantasy story and a family story that zings with magic, warmth and adventure. Which Way to Anywhere is a story full of twists and turns, encompassing magic and mystery. K2 and Izzabird O'Hero are born into a magical family and sworn to secrecy. After their father mysteriously disappears (presumed dead), they acquire a new family who they need to keep their secret from. Theo and Mabel Smith (their stepsiblings) do not like the O'Heros and are highly suspicious of them and try to make their lives a misery. Little do they know that K2 has a secret gift: he draws maps of worlds that are beyond the wildest of imaginations but this gift puts the family in danger when Cyril Sidewinder - a Geography teacher in disguise - terrorises the family and kidnaps a child. The warring stepsiblings need to put their differences aside and embark on a journey to new lands to rescue their sister and father before it is too late! It has a fairly familiar concept at its heart. Magic is real and can be used to open doorways between different worlds. This is a longstanding fantasy trope, that's played with very effectively here by Cressida Cowell. These doorways are opened by drawings of maps, as long as they are done by someone with the right magical gift. The only problem is there hasn't been anyone with that gift for centuries, so someone born with the gift of creating an atlas like that would be both incredibly dangerous and incredibly valuable. The Oxford Literary Festival has in my mind become the leading literary festival of the year. The organisation, the roster of speakers, the ambience and the sheer quality of it all is superb. May it now go from strength to strength each year stretching its ambition more and more. I believe it will.The story – illustrated with Cowell’s familiar, scratchy sketches – has everything that her fans have come to expect. Characters evolve and surprise us (“there’s nothing like an adventure to find out whether you are a Hero or not”); a dense plot swiftly unravels; and as with all the best fantasy, there is a skilled balance between humdrum drama (“[K2] accidentally shot an own goal that lost his team the match in PE, so Angus McDognut gave K2 a dead arm, and K2 had to hide in the toilets”) and high thrills: “Now, calm your breathing, for there are truly terrible things in this planet’s jungle who hunt by the smell of fear, and they hate human beings with a hungry, bloody hatred ... you do not want to draw the attention of these creatures.”