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The Scarecrows

10 best books like The Scarecrows (Robert Westall): The Return of the Twelves, The Edge of the Cloud, The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler, The Haunting, The Little Bookroom, River Boy, The Wind on the Moon, Tulku, The Otterbury Incident, The Ghost Drum

The Return of the Twelves
AuthorPauline Clarke
ISBN0698201175
Beneath a floorboard in the old farmhouse into which his family has just moved, eight-year-old Max Morley discovers twelve time-worn wooden soldiers. Under his careful watch, the "Twelves" come to life, each possessing a name and a distinct personality. As Max soon learns, they share a history filled...
The Edge of the Cloud
AuthorK.M. Peyton
ISBN0192750232
Christina and Will have escaped Flambards for London with their heads full of dreams, only to find a whole new set of problems. Not only the basic ones of work and a place to live, but Will's single-minded ambition to desing and pilot flying machines, which terrify Christina every time he leaves the ground....
The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler
AuthorGene Kemp
ISBN0745103308
An interesting children's book from the 1970s, which succeeds largely on the strength of it's fine grasp of child psychology and language, and its naturalistically rambling, inconclusive plot. I liked it as a child because it felt less like a "story", and more like a slice of life of a real person - albeit...
The Haunting
AuthorMargaret Mahy
ISBN0140363254
If I could use one word to describe this novel... it would be - odd. Which makes it genuinely discordant and spooky for a psychological drama, dotted with very beautiful chilling descriptions... but the strange choice to make the novel carry itself entirely on dialogue means it runs out of steam very...
The Little Bookroom
AuthorEleanor Farjeon
ISBN1590170482
In The Little Bookroom, Eleanor Farjeon mischievously tilts our workaday world to reveal its wonders and follies. Her selection of her favorite stories describes powerful—and sometimes exceedingly silly—monarchs, and commoners who are every bit their match; musicians and dancers who live...
River Boy
AuthorTim Bowler
ISBN0689848048
Fifteen-year-old Jess's grandfather has just had a major heart attack, but he insists he finish his painting, River Boy. At first, Jess cannot understand why this painting is so important to her grandfather, especially since there doesn't seem to be any boy in it at all. But while swimming in the river...
The Wind on the Moon
AuthorEric Linklater
ISBN1590171004
Winner of the Carnegie Medal

In the English village of Midmeddlecum, Major Palfrey asks his two daughters to behave themselves while he is off at war. Sighs Dinah, "I think that we are quite likely to be bad, however hard we try not to be," and her sister Dorinda adds helpfully, "Very often, when...
Tulku
AuthorPeter Dickinson
ISBN0552528129
An attack in the dark, screams, burning huts...Thirteen-year-old Theodore crouches under the trees. His father's Mission has been destroyed. His father is dead. Theodore is on his own, fleeing the Chinese rebels of the Boxer uprising.Then Mrs Jones appears. A botanist, Mrs Jones is a feisty, aging,...
The Otterbury Incident
AuthorC. Day-Lewis
ISBN0435120018
“This is a really super story—I shold know, I wrote it. My name is George, and I’m Ted’s second-in-command: Ted is is centre-forward of the Junior XI at King’s School in Otterbury and a first class chap. He’s the leader of our company, and the story began with our battle against Toppy’s...
The Ghost Drum
AuthorSusan Price
ISBN0571153402
“In a place far distant from where you are now grows an oak-tree by a lake.
Round the oak’s trunk is a chain of golden links.
Tethered to the chain is a learned cat, and this most learned of all cats walks round and round the tree continually.
As it walks one way, it sings songs.
As it walks...
Foxspell
AuthorGillian Rubinstein
ISBN0689806027
After Tod's father abandoned the family, his mother moved them into their grandmother's crowded house. Overwhelmed at school, Tod finds himself lagging behind his classmates and becoming entangled in a destructive gang. After Tod compassionately buries a dead fox, a fox-spirit offers him the chance...
Memorias de una vaca
AuthorBernardo Atxaga
ISBN8434840472
Dice La Vache qui Rit que en este mundo no hay cosa más tonta que una vaca tonta. Y toda la vida de Mo consiste en demostrar a su amiga que ella, desde luego, a pesar de ser vaca -y no caballo brioso-, no tiene ni un pelo de tonta. ¡Ni uno! Es una vaca notablemente Omega, y nada Alfa. Y tiene una voz interior, y...
El polizón del "Ulises"
AuthorAna María Matute
Jujú pasa las tardes en el desván de la casa, que se ha convertido en su barco, el Ulises, la señorita Florentina (una paloma) y su fiel Contramaestre (un perrito) le acompañan en todas sus aventuras. Los días de Jujú son más bien aburridos. Le han criado tres tías solteronas, que le encontraron...
The Red Shoe
AuthorUrsula Dubosarsky
ISBN1596432659
Funny, tough-minded and tender, this is the story of Matilda and her two sisters growing up in Sydney, Australia, in the early 1950s. Their father is mentally unstable and largely absent, their mother is possibly in the thrall of his brother, and a headline-making Russian spy defection is taking...
The Wool-Pack
AuthorCynthia Harnett
ISBN0140301534
Considering how important the wool trade was to the development of early-modern Britain, it is surprising how few novels deal with the business of wool. Those written for young readers are even scarcer. The Wool-Pack helps fill the gap.

This is historical fiction rather than history, written...
Whispers in the Graveyard
AuthorTheresa Breslin
ISBN0749744804
I was very disappointed after finishing this book, and I don't know on what grounds it won the Carnegie Medal.
In short, it deals with too many plots and genres at the same time, not taking any of them seriously.
It starts as a realistic novel, describing the desolate situation of a boy trying to...
Dougy
AuthorJames Moloney
ISBN0702224995
When Dougy's sister Gracey is picked for the state athletics championships, not everybody in their small bush town in pleased. 'Aborigines get special treatment', some of the angry white people say. The championships change everything for Gracey and trigger dramatic events in the town too: black...
Dieu, le sexe et les bretelles
AuthorZep
ISBN2723415937
C'est pô vrai ? Vous connaissez pô Titeuf ? C'est nul, ça. Méganul, même. J'sais pô, moi, faites un effort, quand même. Avec sa bouille toute ronde et sa touffe blonde dressée sur le crâne, c'est un héros moderne des cours de récré. À la fois naïf, plein d'enthousiasme et gentil comme...
A Pack of Lies
AuthorGeraldine McCaughrean
ISBN0192752030
Ailsa doesn't trust MCC Berkshire, the mysterious man helping out in her mother's antique shop. He tells wonderful stories about all the antiques, and his stories persuade the customers to buy the items he talks about, but everything he says is a pack of lies. Isn't it?

The story of Ailsa and...
Jan, mein Freund
AuthorPeter Pohl
Jan fällt auf. Weil er artistisch Fahrrad fahren kann, rote Haare hat und so weiche Gesichtszüge, dass viele ihn für ein Mädchen halten. Doch er kann auch so zuschlagen, dass er bald vor jeder Anpöbelei sicher ist. Da ist aber noch ein Geheimnis um Jan. Niemand kennt seine Adresse und seinen Nachnamen...
Goggle-Eyes
AuthorAnne Fine
ISBN0140340718
"Growing up is a long and confusing business. I try to show that the battle through the chaos is worthwhile and can, at times, be seen as very funny" (Fine, 1994.)

I recall reading this book in year five and feeling really grown up; it was and still is more of a mature take on children’s literature....
Strange Objects
AuthorGary Crew
ISBN1863301135
An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

On 4 June 1629 the Dutch vessel Batavia struck uncharted rocks off the Western Australian coast. By the time help arrived over 120 men, women and children had met their deaths - not in the sea but murdered by two fellow survivors, Wouter...
With Clive in India
AuthorG.A. Henty
ISBN1406813168
Just because something was written over a century ago, that does not mean it was written well. That has been hammered home in ‘With Clive in India’.

It is one of the books freely available on ManyBooks.net, though I picked my copy up a few years ago in Poundland. Three nineteenth-century...
Biggles The Camels Are Coming
AuthorW.E. Johns
ISBN0099283212
What in the world went wrong here!!?? Biggles all of a sudden is a swearing, hard-core fellow with no emotions. I totally did not like him in this one. Technically, W.E. Johns wrote this book first of any other Biggles stories (it is the third one that I've read). So I've imagined a scenario for why his first...
Dear Nobody
AuthorBerlie Doherty
ISBN0141311762
There are literally no redeeming qualities about this book.

The plot wasn't interesting, I couldn't sympathise with the characters, and it honestly felt like I was reading a first draft. Also, there seems to be a distinct aversion to commas, what did the comma ever do to you?

It also...
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