How to Train Your Dragon recap

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III is the small, thoughtful and thoroughly unimpressive son of Stoick the Vast, chief of the Hairy Hooligan tribe on the island of Berk. To be initiated into the tribe, he and nine other boys must each steal a dragon from the nursery inside Wild Dragon Cliff and train it in time for the Thor'sday Thursday festival, on pain of exile. Hiccup ends up with the worst dragon of the lot, a tiny, toothless and utterly disobedient Common or Garden dragon he names Toothless. The tribe's training manual advises only that a boy should yell at his dragon, so Hiccup falls back on a secret of his own: he can speak Dragonese. Toothless disgraces him at the festival anyway and Hiccup is exiled, until two enormous sea dragons wash up on Berk and the only person who can do anything about them is the boy who can talk to dragons. He destroys the monster, is welcomed back, and is recognised at last as a hero of an unexpected kind.

On the island of Berk, ten boys of the Hairy Hooligan tribe are put through the initiation programme run by Gobber the Belch. To pass, each boy must steal a sleeping dragon from the nursery inside Wild Dragon Cliff, train it, and present it at the Thor'sday Thursday festival; anyone who fails is exiled from the tribe. Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, the small and unimpressive son of the chief, Stoick the Vast, is not expected to manage any of it, and his cousin Snotlout says so at length. The raid goes wrong when the sleeping dragons wake and the boys have to run for the cliff top, but every boy comes away with a dragon. Snotlout has a splendid Monstrous Nightmare called Fireworm. Hiccup ends up with the least impressive dragon on the island, an ordinary Common or Garden dragon with no teeth, which he names Toothless.

Training begins from the tribe's only manual, a book by Professor Yobbish whose entire advice is that you should yell at the dragon. Yelling works well enough for the other boys, but not for Toothless, who is greedy, idle and contrary, refuses to hunt, tells obvious lies and takes offence at everything. Hiccup has an advantage he keeps to himself: he has quietly taught himself Dragonese by listening to dragons, so instead of shouting he argues, bargains and pleads with Toothless in the dragon's own language. He tells nobody, since talking to dragons is not a thing Hooligans respect. His grandfather, Old Wrinkly, is the one adult who suspects the boy might have a use for it, and hints that heroism comes in more than one shape. With Thor'sday Thursday approaching, Toothless is still doing exactly as he pleases.

Thor'sday Thursday arrives and the boys must show their dragons obeying them in front of the whole tribe. Hiccup's careful Dragonese counts for nothing when Toothless picks a fight over food, the dragons turn on one another and the ceremony collapses into a riot. Hiccup and Fishlegs are judged failures and exiled from the Hairy Hooligans, to Stoick's public shame and Snotlout's satisfaction.

Two colossal sea dragons, the Green Death and the Purple Death, are washed up on the shore at Berk, each of them big enough to eat the entire tribe, and Viking weapons are useless against them. Hiccup, exiled and with nothing left to lose, is the only person able to speak to them. He goads the two monsters into fighting each other, and while they are occupied he sends Toothless and Fishlegs's dragon Horrorcow into the surviving dragon's nostrils to set it alight from within, so that the gas it makes its own fire with destroys it. Hiccup is thrown into the sea and nearly drowns; Toothless drags him out. Berk is saved, the exile is cancelled, and Hiccup is honoured as a hero by the tribe that had written him off, with Stoick openly proud of his son for the first time. Toothless remains precisely as disobedient as before.

Two vast sea dragons, the Green Death and the Purple Death, are stranded on Berk's shore, and the tribe's weapons cannot hurt them. Hiccup, already sentenced to exile after Toothless wrecked the Thor'sday Thursday ceremony, uses his Dragonese to provoke the two monsters into turning on each other, then has the small dragons set the survivor burning from the inside, so that the gas it makes its own fire with destroys it. He is flung into the sea in the process and is pulled out half drowned by Toothless. The exile is cancelled, Fishlegs is reinstated with him, and Stoick, who has spent the whole book embarrassed by his son, declares him a hero in front of the tribe. Little else about Hiccup's life changes: Snotlout is unaltered, and Toothless is exactly as greedy and disobedient at the end as at the beginning. The story is told as the memoir of the elderly Hiccup, who presents this as the first of his adventures.