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Stowaway

Name: Stowaway
Author: Karen Hesse
ISBN: 9780689839870

by Karen Hesse, Rodica Prato (Illustrator), Robert Andrew Parker

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Overview

In 1767, 11-year-old Nicholas Young stowed away on Captain James Cook's "Endeavour." Cook's three-year mission was secret: he was charged by the British Navy to search for a lost continent, believed to be located between the southern tip of South America and New Zealand. Young's journal charts the voyage and with every port of call a new adventure awaits. This is the story of a great voyage of discovery seen through the eyes of a boy who was actually there.

A fictionalized journal relates the experiences of a young stowaway from 1768 to 1771 aboard the Endeavor which sailed around the world under Captain James Cook.

Synopsis

In the summer of 1768, an eleven-year-old butcher's apprentice named Nicholas Young climbed aboard a ship, hid himself from captain and crew, and waited to be carried far away from the life he hated in London.

Nick didn't know it, but the ship he chose — H.M.S. Endeavour — was bound for an astonishing adventure. Captained by James Cook, Endeavour was on a secret mission to discover an unknown continent at the bottom of the globe. During his three-year voyage, Nick encountered hardship and was awed by new discoveries; he weathered danger and proved himself brave when disaster struck; he earned the respect and trust of the gentlemen on board; he made a friend for life. And he made history.

An eleven-year-old boy named Nicholas Young really did stow away on Cook's Endeavour. Based on exhaustive historical research and illustrated with evocative drawings by Robert Andrew Parker, Stowaway is Newbery winner Karen Hesse's extraordinary fictional account of the real Nicholas's journey.

Publishers Weekly

Listeners set sail with 11-year-old Nicholas Young, a stowaway aboard Captain Cook's ship Endeavour, in this solid audiobook version of Hesse's period adventure. In a pleasant English accent, Cale smoothly reads the pages of Young's journal, chronicling a dangerous 1768-1771 voyage from England to an area south of New Zealand where Cook and his crew searched for a new continent. Despite his gaining passage illegally, Nick proves a worthy ship hand to Cook and his crew of 80-plus men, rising through the ranks to become the ship surgeon's assistant. Through Nick's innocent eyes, listeners explore exotic terrain, experience day-to-day life among seamen and face life-or-death situations generated by the unpredictable nature of weather, wind and water. Upon returning to England, after most of the crew has been lost to a typhoid breakout, Nick is emboldened, ready to face the difficult circumstances he first sought to escape by stowing away. The tone of discovery in Cale's voice buoys the proceedings, keeping listeners rapt. An afterword provides historical information about the real Nicholas Young and the Endeavour (though the recording does not include the handy glossary and ship's crew list and itinerary that are provided in the book). Ages 10-up. (Dec.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

About the Author, Karen Hesse

Newbery winner Karen Hesse re-creates Cook's momentous voyage through the eyes of this remarkable boy, creating a fictional journal filled with fierce hurricanes, warring natives, and disease, as Nick discovers new lands, incredible creatures, and lifelong friends.

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Editorials

From Barnes & Noble

Embark on an exciting voyage with the Newbery Award-winning author of Out of the Dust! With Stowaway, Karen Hesse delivers an extraordinary, sweeping tale of adventure -- told through the fictional journals of Nicholas Young, a real-life stowaway on Captain James Cook's Endeavor in 1768. Taking the bare facts of this boy's history as a starting point, Hesse has Nicholas tell his own story -- from the moment he is discovered onboard to the moment he discovers land, from his loneliness at sea to his friendship with a young Tahitian boy. It's an adventure you won't want to miss!

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

KLIATT

To quote KLIATT's November 2000 review of the hardcover edition: To escape his disapproving father, his studies, and his apprenticeship to a cruel butcher, 11-year-old Nicholas Young stows away on Captain James Cook's Endeavor. He tells of his adventures on the amazing round-the-world trip, from 1768 to 1771, in diary entries. The ship is on a voyage of discovery, and Nicholas conveys the excitement of discovering new land for the king as well as the scientists' thrill at finding new animals and plants. Nicholas becomes the helper to the ship's surgeon and nurses typhoid-ridden crewmembers. He makes friends with a Tahitian boy and he is the first to spot New Zealand. There are encounters with natives both friendly and fierce, animals on board that Nicholas tends lovingly, a nasty midshipman who has it in for him, the threat of scurvy, and the danger of great storms at sea. This adventure story told in journal form is very much in the style of Scholastic's Dear America and My Name is America series, and will appeal to fans of historical fiction and sea stories. It's based on fact, as the afterword by Hesse (Newbery Medal-winning author of Out of the Dust and other YA novels) makes clear, and it includes a list of the ship's company, its itinerary, and a glossary. Full-page b/w illustrations are interspersed here and there. KLIATT Codes: J—Recommended for junior high school students. 2000, Simon & Schuster, Aladdin, 316p. illus. map.,
— Paula Rohrlick

VOYA

This fictional journal of Nicholas Young, a stowaway aboard Captain James Cook's English ship Endeavor, recounts the adventures that helped chart new lands, plants, animals, customs, and people during her three-year voyage from 1768 to 1771. Nick's diary follows the route of the actual journey, based on information that Hesse researched from the journals of crewmembers, although little is known about the real Nicholas Young. Escaping his abusive apprenticeship with a butcher, Nick finds his mistreatment aboard the Endeavor tolerable. His desire, enthusiasm, and pride in his work, especially as the surgeon's assistant and as teacher to Samuel Evans, one of the men who helped stow Nick aboard the ship, gain him the eventual respect of the crew long after he is discovered. Along the way, Nick develops a friendship with a native, sees cannibals holding human heads, watches natives being shot, helps the crew through shipwreck and disease, witnesses his friends die, and longs for home. Stowaway could be especially useful to present an exploration unit aided by the maps located on the endpapers. An endnote suggests following the Endeavor's travels on the maps by longitude as indicated in the journal, although this idea would have been more beneficial if offered at the start. Newbery Award-winner Hesse again writes in her poetic voice, this time through the words of an eighteenth-century eleven-year-old boy who turns fourteen by the end of the trip. Although the book's length might deter some younger readers, Hesse holds readers' interest in discovering Nick's and the rest of the Endeavor crew's fate. Glossary. Illus. Maps. Source Notes. VOYA CODES: 4Q 4P M J (Better than most, marred onlyby occasional lapses; Broad general YA appeal; Middle School, defined as grades 6 to 8; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9). 2000, McElderry/S & S, 328p, . Ages 12 to 15. Reviewer: Jennifer Bromann SOURCE: VOYA, April 2001 (Vol. 24, No.1)

School Library Journal

Gr 5-9-Captain James Cook left England on the H.M.S. Endeavor in 1769 with a crew of 85 men including an 11-year-old stowaway named Nicholas Young. Historians believe the boy could read and write, and was probably smuggled aboard the ship. This was enough information for Karen Hesse (S&S, 2000) to chronicle a fictional account of this young butcher's apprentice who runs away from his abusive employer to adventure in the uncharted waters of the South Pacific. Assisting the crew by scrubbing, polishing, shoveling and fetching, Nicholas becomes the ears and eyes of the voyage. British actor, David Cale, narrates the story presented as a journal. Each diary entry is prefaced by the date and location of the ship. Cale effectively enunciates each and every degree of longitude and latitude, reinforcing the painstaking attention to detail. Birds and fish are collected aboard the ship and sketched by Mr. Banks, a naturalist. Nicholas is awed by the beauty of Tahiti and contemplates staying there with his new friend, Tarheto. They witness cannibalism among the "New Zeland" natives, and trips ashore are fraught with wonder and wariness. The Endeavor limps home battered by storms and the crew plagued by scurvy, accidents, and death. Nicholas returns home a young man. The colloquialism and authenticity in the text is handled deftly by Cale, although the unfamiliar words and phrases will be better understood by students who read along with the story.-Vicki Reutter, Cazenovia High School, NY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Presented in diary format, this is the story of 11-year-old Nicholas Young's 1768 voyage as a stowaway on Captain Cook's ship Endeavor. Hesse uses the few facts known about Nick, as well as the actual journals of Cook and naturalist Joseph Banks, as sources for her account of their three-year voyage to explore and chart the South Pacific. Nick has run away from the casual cruelty of a father who is disappointed in his son's lack of scholarship and has been apprenticed to"the Butcher" to toughen him up. Throughout, he is haunted by the nightmarish Butcher, whose memory is evoked by the brutish Midshipman Bootie. In the course of the voyage, Nick is made a Surgeon's assistant and gains the crew's acceptance. He grows into a skilled young man who recognizes his strengths and is prepared to hold his head up and make amends to the people he has disappointed. Renowned for her spare, poetic style (Out of the Dust, 1997, Newbery Medal), Hesse is just as successful telling a story rich in detail that is reflective in style and content of an 18th-century journal. Here the beauty of her language is at the service of such phenomena as a show of porpoises and the almost-human scream of the Endeavor as it is impaled on a coral reef. So adept is the pacing that, like a sea voyage, sometimes Nick's journal entries are as prosaic as days at sea and sometimes entries become almost staccato as the action drives the reader forward. Ink-and-wash drawings by Robert Andrew Parker are appropriate to the classic genre of sea adventure. In a lucid, readable style, free of excessive nautical jargon, Hesse simultaneously takes readers along on one of history's greatest enterprises, and introduces them to oneofhistory's most prodigious natural leaders. (Historical fiction. 10-14)