Attack of the Beastly Baby-Sitter is the eighteenth book in the Give Yourself Goosebumps gamebook series. It was published in 1997.
The cover illustration shows a huge rat in clothes, standing in front of a house and ringing the doorbell. On the right is a scared child peeking through window blinds.
Blurb[]
ADVENTURES IN BABY-SCARING . . .
Rats! You're too old for a baby-sitter. But your mom hired one anyway. And that's the good news. The bad news is the baby-sitter works for a company called KidScare.
So what do you do? If you like to play games, meet Dare. He knows some killer games — but if you lose, you'll never go home again. Forget about playing nice!
Or maybe you'd rather go to the Fun Zone. Look out! Will you drown in the Bottomless Ball Pit? Will you find your way out of the Tomb of the Unknown Rat? Just one bit of advice: Whatever you do, don't eat any of that stuff marked "Switch Cheese"!
The choice is yours in this scary GOOSEBUMPS adventure that's packed with over 20 super-spooky endings!
Plot[]
Your mother has hired a babysitter named Zoe for you and your six-year-old brother, "Stinko". Zoe has whiskers, claw-like fingernails, and a pointy nose. Zoe provides you with a spinner. The spinner offers the choice between fun or games. Whatever it lands on determines which of the two main storylines you will follow. The spinner is reused for a couple of choices, and there are a few activities to do in the "Games" section with a tattooed man named Dare.
Story A[]
The spinner lands on FUN, and Zoe immediately takes you and Stinko to the "Fun zone". before you notice, Stinko is already wondering off, and from listening just for a bit to Zoe's conversation with one of the other babysitters, you quickly find out that the fun zone isn't exactly as fun as it seems. Now you must find Stinko and Escape from the fun zone, before Zoe forces you to help her produce one of the key ingredients she needs for her "Switch Cheese" - and that is grated kid...
Story B[]
The spinner lands on GAMES, causing Zoe to vanish. Now a heavy tattooed man called "Dare" is the one taking care of you. He tells you and Stinko that you must play (and win) all his games if you ever want to go home. If you lose, you will be forced to join KidScare, forever (although there is not a single ending in this Story in which something like that happens).
Side Story C[]
In story A, instead of looking for Stinko right away, you decide to keep snooping on Zoe. But you accidentally knock over a crate of Switch cheese, and Zoe spots you shortly after. You run for a door with a sign that reads "NO EXIT, EMPLOYEES ONLY", and eventually end up at the heart of the rat people's operation (Along with Stinko, who is now tied up to a lab table). Zoe informs you that you and Stinko were kidnapped because of your "genetic makeup", and that with your help, they might succeed in making the Switch cheese they need to become humans once again.
List of endings[]
There are twenty one bad endings and three good endings.
Bad endings[]
| Ending | Paths |
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You cheat and pick the wrong route during a maze game, and end up being buried alive by rats. This is a punishment for not actually trying to solve the maze. |
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You Don't have the cassette tape to fend off the rat people, so they easily overpower you and shred you with a kid grater. There are two ways to reach this ending. |
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While being chased by a dragon, you let go of the drawbridge to cool off in the moat. This gives the dragon the perfect chance to burn you and Stinko into a crisp. |
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You open a box that Dare left behind, and find a mirror inside. Dare tells you that if you are in the mirror- you are also in the box. He then shoves you and Stinko inside and closes it down on the both of you. The book states that you'll never win, implying that you're trapped forever. |
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You and Stinko take an elevator to the office of Kidscare. There, you find a recording from your mother, telling you that your parents extended their trip for another week, meaning that you will be stuck with Dare for that time. |
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Whilst in the ball pit, you're sucked up into a tube and coated in plastic (this is done to protect the balls from damage), turning you into one of the balls. You stay in the ball pit forever. |
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You hide from two giant rat mutants inside a rat tomb. After they leave, they decide to seal it, causing you to be buried alive by dead rats. |
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You swing on a rope to try and locate Stinko inside the ball pit, but you slip just as you are above a cheese vat. You fall inside, and end up being minced in the vat. |
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You refuse to help Zoe with the rat problems, so the rats overpower you and use you for experiments. |
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You become one of the Rat people army after willingly (or forcefully) eating a switch cheese. Stinko arrives a few minutes later, and you notice that the same thing happened to him. |
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During a game with Dare which has you in danger of turning into a vampire bat, you are instructed to pick a ball that might have a cure. You pick the red ball, and the book states that since vampires love the color red, it's obvious you chose it. You end up being turned into a vampire bat. |
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Alternatively, you pick the green ball, and you and Stinko end up being turned into frogs instead. |
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You, Stinko and Dare are all frozen solid in ice. As you start to thaw out, Stinko defrosts first. You call to him to help you, but he refuses and runs away, leaving you and Dare still frozen. |
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After winning some of his games, Dare gives you an option to quit while you're ahead. You take it, causing Dare to turn you into a floating head without a body. He then tells you that you can now quit because you are a HEAD. |
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During the parachute game with Dare, you pick the wrong string, which leaves you dangling midair in the middle of nowhere. |
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After flicking your coin over the edge, you and Stinko end up falling into nowhere, apparently forever. |
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Trying to escape from a sand monster, you find a slab that says you must roll a dice to make your next move. After rolling an odd number, both you and Stinko start sinking in quicksand. Dare then tells you that in his games, the odd ones are always out. |
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A bunch of rats chase you and end up forcing you to enter a door that leads to a giant maze. You look above you and notice a huge rat in a lab coat taking notes. You realize that you are now an experiment, and the book states that you will never escape the maze. |
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While running away from the rat people, you leap out of reach when one of them tries to grab you, but accidently fling yourself from the bridge. You end up falling into a bottomless pit. |
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You were eaten by a Beast after answering a Goosebumps question incorrectly. |
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During the final game with Dare, you chose ALL. Dare then gets all his tattoos back, and the book tells you that you have to do the games all over again. |
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Good endings[]
| Ending | Paths |
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You get home via the use of a DiskGoTech, a game console controller. When you get there, it's two days later, so your mother is home and Zoe's gone. |
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You use the cassette player you won from the caves to scare the rats. Just before the place collapses, you, Stinko and a bunch of other kids manage to escape. |
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You destroy Dare's chest tattoo, causing him to disappear into thin air. You and Stinko are ready to go home after knowing that both him and the babysitter are gone for good. |
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Page map[]
International releases[]
Gallery[]
- The Canadian title is a wordplay on the french word "bête", which can mean either "stupid" or "beast".
Advertisement[]
Artwork[]
.jpg "Attack of the Beastly Babysitter (Full Art).jpg (539 KB)")
Trivia[]
- The back cover tagline is a reference to the 1987 film Adventures in Babysitting.
- The Beast from the East is mentioned in the novel, and a Beast appears in the story.
- During Dare's "Games" section the reader can take part in various activities; a follow the ropes game, tossing a coin towards the edge of a table without it falling off (it's a bad ending if it does), melting ice to choose which page to turn to, and various inclusions of The Spinner.
- The choice between adventures A and B are not chosen manually like previous books, but are chosen randomly via use of The Spinner located at the back of the book. This is the only time this has been done in Give Yourself Goosebumps.
- The Spinner shows up for more choices during the "Games" section (Adventure B), with the appropriate choices labeled. Oddly, one of the choices is "Yes/No" which never shows up in this book, suggesting at least one choice being deleted from the book.
- Despite the cover, Zoe appears as a normal (although "mousy") looking human when she first arrives at the reader's house. She also wears a tank top, as opposite to the long shirt of the rat babysitter on the cover.
- Whenever Zoe (And the rat people) are evil or not can change in story A. The main story depicts them as evil, wanting to kidnap and grate kids to make the switch cheese. But in the side story, all they need is a cup of saliva from you and Stinko (Although they do change you and Stinko into rats, they cancel it out as soon as they get the filled cup).
- This book references Barbie and the Game Boy.
- Mark Nagata describes being half satisfied with how the final artwork came out. [1]