Read Goosebumps 20 – The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
R. L. Stine's The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight is a Goosebumps story for 8 year olds about a summer on the farm when everything has quietly changed.
Jodie and her brother Mark spend a month every summer with Grandpa Kurt and Grandma Miriam. Jodie loves all of it. The barn, the cornfields, Grandpa's ghost stories by the fire and Grandma's chocolate chip pancakes.
This year it feels wrong. Her grandparents seem quieter and older. There are no stories. There are no pancakes (cornflakes instead!). And everyone keeps glancing down the table at Stanley, the hired man.
Stanley has a new book about superstitions and believes every word of it. He's put up a whole field of scarecrows with the same mean painted frown. On the drive from the station he tells Jodie, in a voice she's never heard him use, that the scarecrow walks at midnight.
That night, from her bedroom window, she watches the scarecrows twitch on their poles.
Jodie tells the story and she's great company. She's bossy with her lazy little brother (who only seems to know three words, cool, weird and gross). She sneezes her way round the whole farm. And she can't decide whether to believe her own eyes. Is it the wind? Is it Stanley's teenage son Sticks, who loves scaring "the city kids"? Or is something really out there in the corn?
It's spooky rather than gory. Lots of creaking cornstalks and moonlight, and things glimpsed out of the corner of your eye.
The book talks about Stanley in an old-fashioned way. The family say he isn't very smart, and Grandpa jokes about him not having all his watts. He's gentle and kind and the children are fond of him, but if your reader picks up on it, it could be a good chance to talk about how we describe people.
If this one goes down well, Night of the Living Dummy has the same moonlit shivers. Twins Kris and Lindy each get a ventriloquist's dummy, and one night Kris wakes to find Slappy sitting in the chair by her window, staring right at her.
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