The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight (Classic Goosebumps #16, Goosebumps #20) by R. L. Stine

The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight (Classic Goosebumps #16, Goosebumps #20) by R. L. Stine-160 pages

I've enjoyed reading Goosebumps books for the monthly challenge, including this one. Jodie and Mark go to their grandparents' rural farm like they have every summer only to find that things are not as they remember. Grandma Miriam no longer makes chocolate chip pancakes like they remember. Instead, it's corn flakes cereal every morning. Stanley (and his son Sticks), the live-in farm hand, has recently gotten into an old book of superstition and has figured out how to make the farm's scarecrows come alive. In exchange for getting his wishes all the time he agreed to put all the scarecrows back to sleep. Did all the scarecrows get put back to sleep, though? Jodie and Mark swear they keep seeing scarecrows walk and they can't help but think about Stanley's warning when they first arrived. He warned them that "The scarecrow walks at midnight." Are there still scarecrows really alive? 

Thirteenth Child by Patricia C. Wrede

Thirteenth Child by Patricia C. Wrede, 344 pages

Lan and Eff are twins. Lan is the 7th son of a 7th son making his twin, Eff, the thirteenth child. There are all sorts of rumors that fly about a 13th child and Eff has to live with repercussions -- teasing, cruelty from her relatives and sometimes her siblings. When her parents realize the damage the teasing is doing to their young daughter, they decide to move to the "wild west" where her father, a 7th son and magician, will teach at the university. It's a fresh start for Eff and she begins to learn all there is to magic -- including "prophesies" being nothing more than old superstitions sometimes. Still, for so long she's heard that being a 13th child will make her wicked someday so she squelches the magic within her to the detriment of herself and those around her. Slowly, she learns to accept and embrace who she is, but will it be in time to save the territories? The world around her is quite wild and dangerous ... and ignoring your potential to help is the same as letting evil take hold. There isn't a whole lot of action in the book. Instead, you have a whole lot of world and detail building. (This might bore some readers.) I found the book to be entertaining enough and am interested to see how the Frontier series pans out.