The Scarecrows

Robert Westall's second Carnegie Medal winner returns to familiar territory with events from the past haunting, entwining and influencing the present.

Simon is not yet fully recovered from the death of his military father, for whom he has a near fanatical regard. The boy's sense of betrayal wells up into rage, bewilderment and hystena when his mother decides to marry Joe Moreton, a famous cartoonist and the direct opposite to the father. He is forced to pass the summer holidays in Cheshire where the solace that he seeks in a derelict mill is shattered too, for his emotionally-charged state contributes to a sinister re-emergence of the past as three oddly familiar scarecrows move menacingly from the mill towards the house intent upon evil in a dramatic, tense climax.

The novel has repaid re-reading for it does possess extra-ordinary powers of tension and suspense, which raises it above the humdrum and places its author in the forefront of writers of intelligent and challenging ghost stories for young people.