Dear Cressida Cowell,

First off, I feel that I should say I love your work, like any fan should. Not many people know who you are, and honestly, it's a tragedy. Millions of people have seen the "How To Train Your Dragon Movies," but almost no one has read the book! I have to admit to the sin of seeing the movie before the book, but thank God I waited a little while after the credits to see a little end card that said, "based on a series by Cressida Cowell."

Then, I wanted those books. Immediately.

I was 8 years old when I saw the movie, and I remember being in complete awe from the very beginning to the end. Despite my younger sister spoiling a good portion of it, I had never in my life seen a movie that I loved more, so surely the books had to be good as well.

There was only one problem: I didn't like reading.

You wouldn't believe it then, with me devouring books like it was life or death or how I read the most obscure things for fun and genuinely enjoy them or how I always wait after the credits of a movie to see if there's a book I can read. Back then, it was a chore, but as I started reading the first book in the series, I was hooked.

At first, it was from shock. From the very first few pages, the book was so drastically different from the movie I wondered if I was reading some sort of bootleg version. Nevertheless, I continued, and for the first time ever, I got in trouble for reading in class. I quickly read the rest of the series, getting all the way to the seventh book and then stopping, because there were no more books.

For a year and a half, I searched, eventually giving up when I resigned myself to the fact that maybe you had given up on your series.

Although, two years later, imagine my shock when I found the eighth book in a little-used bookshop! Book eight ends on a cliffhanger, so then began my manic search for the ninth, and then the 10th, 11th and 12th. Then...it was over. I had finished the series. My love for the movies is special. Those two movies remain my favorites, and until the day I die, I will preach that the "How To Train Your Dragon" movies are the only good movies that Dreamworks ever made, other than "Spirit," but even my horse-loving youth gave those dragons first place.

The books are different.

It's no exaggeration to say that your books have changed my life. After my initial sadness at the book seven stop, I began reading more. If a short little book about a boy and his troublesome dragon could truly take me to a new world, what could other books do? For the first time in my life, my interest spread beyond short, easy-to-finish picture books.

And here I am today, 16, reading books like "Plato's Republic," "Othello" and any and everything written by Edgar Allen Poe, because one woman showed me reading can not only be a new hobby but an escape, a place to go when I feel like no one else is there for me. Everyone reads differently, and that means that Hiccup is my own Hiccup, different from everyone else's, and in a way, doesn't that make him my friend?

I'm rereading the series for the first time in years, Cressida Cowell. I'm on the final book, and even now, I smile at the little jokes, enjoy Toothless' shenanigans that will forever exasperate everyone around him and revel in Hiccup's victories and share in his sorrows.

As I read them, I not only read them as myself, but I read them as the little girl who's hiding a book in her lap, pretending to do multiplication tables but is only focusing on turning the pages as quietly as she can because she needs to make sure Hiccup isn't swallowed by the Green Death. I'm reading it as the little girl who begs her mother to stay up just 15 more minutes, because she'll never get to sleep if she doesn't find out how the Vikings escape the Exterminator dragons. I'm reading as the little girl who's fighting carsickness because by golly, if she turns away for one second, Alvin might become the King of the Wilderwest.

I'm reading your books not just as myself but as the people I once was, the ones who have shaped me.

"The past affects the present in more ways than we realize." Old Wrinkly was right, Cressida Cowell, it really does.

I'm writing myself, and I hope that one day I can be published. And if I can convince one, only one person that reading truly is the greatest adventure, like you did for me... Well, I'll consider it a success.

Best of luck, Cressida Cowell. Thanks for making me the person I am today.

A would-be-Hooligan,

Emma