Karen Hesse writes with the skill of a great author. In Young Nick's Head she has mastered the language of eighteenth-century England and by so doing has encapsulated the sentiments of a young boy, his thoughts, fears, joys and his awe as he escapes into the unknown. In 1768, when creeping aboard Endeavour, Nick Young embarked on a journey he could never have imagined, so too today is the reader taken on his own voyage of discovery.