The Scarecrows by Robert Westall

The Scarecrows is a children's novel by Robert Westall was published in 1981. The novel was awarded the Carnegie Medal 1981, and this is the second Carnegie award for Robert Westall. It is a psychological novel with a supernatural twist, dealing with themes of rage, isolation and fear in a plot concerning a thirteen-year-old boy's reaction to his mother's remarriage. The story is a third-person narrative, but the point of view is entirely that of Simon Wood. The novel begins at Simon's boarding school, where the poisonous atmosphere of bullying and denigration has nurtured Simon's "devils", as he describes his blind rages. Here he first sees Joe Moreton, who has given Simon's widowed mother a lift to an event at the school. Simon loathes him at first sight, regarding him as yob and is unimpressed by his fame as an artist…