The Scarecrows Know Your Name

Dell Okafor names things to feel safe. So her first week stuck on her aunt and uncle’s corn farm, she makes a paper tag with her own name on it and leaves it on the windowsill. By morning, it’s gone.

There are twelve scarecrows in the back field. They only move when you’re not looking. A little closer to the house each morning. A little more like people Dell used to know.

The field doesn’t just take. It trades. And it has just made a thirteenth tag — with Dell’s name on it.

The grown-ups have an easy answer for everything: the wind, the crows, an overactive imagination, a cousin’s mean joke. But the count keeps changing. Twelve scarecrows. Then thirteen. Then a face on one of them she recognizes. To keep her own name — and stay a girl instead of straw — Dell has to figure out the rules of the trade before the field collects what it’s owed.

A creepy, funny, page-turning middle-grade horror story where every chapter ends on a scare and half of them are real. Reads as a standalone — no prior books required.