Attack of the Beastly Baby-Sitter

Give Yourself Goosebumps #18

by R.L. Stine

Readers are placed in the character of a young person who is being watched by terrifying babysitter Zoe, whose ideas of fun including horrifying games like the Bottomless Ball Pit and Tomb of the Unknown Rat. Original.

Genres: Horror, Childrens, Gamebooks, Middle Grade, Fiction, Choose Your Own Adventure, Horror Thriller

138 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1997

About the author

Robert Lawrence Stine known as R. L. Stine and Jovial Bob Stine, is an American novelist and writer, well known for targeting younger audiences. Stine, who is often called the Stephen King of children's literature, is the author of dozens of popular horror fiction novellas, including the books in the Goosebumps, Rotten School, Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room and Fear Street series.

R. L. Stine began his writing career when he was nine years old, and today he has achieved the position of the bestselling children's author in history. In the early 1990s, Stine was catapulted to fame when he wrote the unprecedented, bestselling Goosebumps® series, which sold more than 250 million copies and became a worldwide multimedia phenomenon. His other major series, Fear Street, has over 80 million copies sold.

Stine has received numerous awards of recognition, including several Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards and Disney Adventures Kids' Choice Awards, and he has been selected by kids as one of their favorite authors in the NEA's Read Across America program. He lives in New York, NY.

http://us.macmillan.com/itsthefirstda...

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun interactive book. I loved being able to choose what I would do throughout the story. I can see why this type of book is appealing to children.

[Weathervane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was truly bizarre. The concept of a group of human rats that abduct kids in order to turn them into cheese is good, but the human rat-maze, the "Switch Cheese" the rat-men use to prevent fully turning back into rats, and the play-centre the rats inhabit all bring the book into the top-tier. There are also some great references, like when the book mentioned the '90s TV show Fact or Fiction. On a whole, I really enjoyed the story in ways I usually don't when reading GYGB.

The second plot branch was pretty dull, but luckily it makes up the minority of the book's text.

Very creative.

[Alejandro Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Concluding my Mark Nagata illustrated reads for this series, this book just got pushed back further and further. I’d always wondered what one could do to warrant a full book involving an evil babysitter, and as it turns out, a lot of this book deviated from the traditional house setting entirely. For what I particularly liked, Dare was a stellar idea for a character, let alone a solid villain. His physical composition is unforgettable and is exceptionally unique, especially for as obscure a Goosebumps story as this. There are some great endings such as the one where you get drafted (basically) and one where crushed to death by… (spoilers) dead rats. Yum? Bleh? Idk, but Master Splinter better not read this. The whole sequence involving dead rats and the reveals below the KidScare is both tense and particularly interesting. There’s some other great moments like within the castle maze and the final battle with a certain rodent villain, and there’s some neat little puzzles here that always keep these books afloat within the series. I liked both arcs equally if one couldn’t tell; neither of them are great but they’re both a solid, simple “really good.” Now for some playful banter: The Beast from the East puzzle. Not an issue and I won’t deduct anything for it, but damn is it funny how this basically confirms these books are ghost-written. The Beast from the East’s color is, if you read the original book, not blue; it is dependent on the player’s physical complexion, whether it be orange scales or charcoal armor clades. Ha. Also the sun isn’t yellow bruh 😭. Now for actual negatives: the randothon returns. I’m not a big fan of overt randomness in these books, and thankfully it’s not common for these to deviate into utter nonsense, but this sadly started approaching there in the Games arc with Dare, my boy. It made sense overall and had a clear direction, but can we please keep a consistent idea for more than five pages? One minute, we’re in an icy wasteland fighting to not freeze to death, and the next we’re battling a dragon in a moat. I don’t like this kind of stuff and, for worse, this book hammered a bit of that in here and it didn’t really work for me. The intro to the book is easily one of the worst for a GYG, with some goofy ass stuff going on like the DiskGo Tech (my BROTHA) and annoying characters; it’s quite deterring. And, there’s a lot of mid endings that didn’t land. It’s almost no in-between: either mid endings or great endings, and that’s basically it minus the canon(ish) ending where they say the name of the book; that one is just pretty good. Overall, 7.5/10. I recommend this souly because of Dare and for some of the body horror with the rat shenanigans. THE BEAST FROM THE EAST IS NOT BLUE. FIRE 5 OF STINE’S GOONS IMMEDIATELY.

[하영 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly I kept trying to escape till I won. I have read a few books like these by R.L. Stine and easily won. But this book was much harder. If you ever read this which you should make sure you choose very carefully .Cuz 1 wrong decision here will make you regret why you didn't pick the other option.Anyways it was a pretty good book.

[Tiffany Spencer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Attack of the Beastly Babysitter
My Story:
My parents are going out of town and have hired a baby sitter from a place called Kid’s Care. Her name is Mary Ellen. But the girl who shows up isn’t her. And says there was an “accident” on the way over with a car crash. Soon after my parent’s leave a lady calls named Mary Ellen but our lady brother tells her we already have a sitter (Right away this rings WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!) This crazy chick probably stalked her and ran her off the road, She pulls out a spinner and tells us to pick “FUN” or “GAME”

I got games when I went to the Spinner. (Tells you how to use it in the back of the book), Zoe vanishes. There’s a tattooed man standing there and tells you his name is DARE! (NIIICE!!). The first “game” is pretty lame. You toss a parachute up and the quickest to get under and out of it wins (sighing this is gonna be a LONG night).

To see if we win we have to play some kind of string puzzle (which in my ebook format cuts off so I’m just gonna have to pick a page and hope for the best). It ends with me hanging in the air on a parachute with Dare and my brother gone, (SEE this is what I’m talking about with these VAGUE STUPID ENDINGS)

Rating 4 I can’t even psych myself up to want to try to see what happens with “GAMES”. I might eventually and update but today just isn’t that day! The plot was lazy and uninspiring! I was more interested in whether the baby sitter ran the other one of the road and killed her. Maybe she was someone that was mean to her at Kid’s Scare and she was out for revenge! Don’t you think that sounds like a WAY better plot?

[Mjhancock · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not one of the better Goosebumps books. Or one of the better Give Yourself Goosebumps books. Or even one of the better baby-sitter themed Give Yourself Goosebumps books. The basic idea is that you and your brother have been left with a babysitter; you choose the main sitter, and the paths fork accordingly. One choice puts you with a bunch of lab experiment Rat People, and the other with Dare, a tattooed man who literally warps reality while making you play a series of games. The Rat People fork has a bunch of fairly expected outcomes: you're ground into their food, you become one of them, etc. Pretty standard stuff. The Dare branch is interesting, if only because it's so clearly added after the rat branch, to basically prop up the size of the book. And it does feature a lot of choices that aren't really choices at all, but strange games, or random chances. That makes it interesting, but fairly irritating to get through, since you either cheat or get lucky a lot. The Dare branch is a bit too random to be fully entertaining; the Rat People branch is a bit too limited.

[Paige Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Welp this story just further confirmed my fear of rats. Yikes...

Attack of the Beastly Baby-Sitter follows two siblings as they are being babysat by a girl from KidsCare. Turns out she's not really the girl who was supposed to babysit them and the siblings are in for one heck of a ride while under her watch.

I really enjoyed this one! Hoping to see more like this as I continue on with the series.

[Amazingsomeone · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this recently, although I liked Goosebumps as a kid, I absolutely hated it. I guess, the "Give Yourself Goosebumps" series, in general, isn't as good as the other books written by the author. It's just a marketing gimmick, that makes the story much shorter, fragmented and worse.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was SO fun. 10/10 recommend returning to grade school chapter books instead of doing your homework for your MA

[paige turner ♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I ended on page 104, it was funny, but it wasn't really my favourite. I'll have to re-read it sometime soon to see what other endings I could get.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one was just okay.

[Tulip · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the give yourself goosebumps i remember reading and really enjoying as a child, i reread it this year and still really enjoyed it (and i remembered how to get the good ending!)

[fanboyriot · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this one. It had such a fun plot and it was really fun picking the different paths.

[Colton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whew, another strange one. In this story, your mom hires a babysitter from a company called either KidsCare or KidScare (actually pretty clever). You eventually pick which storyline based on an antagonist. If you pick Games, you go head to head with Dare, a strange man with tattoos all over his body that he can bring to life. He can also bend time and do some other pretty strange stuff. Or, you can go with Zoe, the babysitter. I can't recall exactly how, but you end up in some bizarre, Hunger Games-esque woods fight and a strange underground factory where kids are turned into rats. If that sounds strangely cool to you, then I'd definitely recommend!

[Enrique · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the very few of the Give Yourself Goosebumps books that I've never seen or head of, and it wasn't easy to get. Happy to say this is definitely one of the better GYG! The two different storylines with Fun/Zoe or Games/Dare are so drastically different it genuinely feels like two books in one. Definitely one of the sillier and self aware Goosebumps books out there too. You can tell Stine had a ton of fun with this one, with your brother referred to as "Stinko" the whole time, the illustrated mazes, mini-games, and real world objectives, and half the endings ending with a dumb or cheesy pun or joke. Peak Goosebumps right here.

[Conor · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a bit strange. I found this and read it. I'm going to be 28 soon.

...but, this isen't nearly as good as either a) my memory of a goosebumps or b) my memory of choose-your-own-adventure.

And it's pretty fluffy crap: the first big choice in the book is "FUN" or "GAMES" wherein if you chose "FUN" the evil character is a baby-sitter-cum-rodent who is called "hippy" what seems like several dozen times, or a large tatooed man if you're set on the "GAMES" selection. This is clearly to help children to avoid drugs and beastiality on one hand, and avoid friendly sailors on the other.

[Lacie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is about a babysitter who wants to play scary games with you. Creepy things happen while the babysitter is there-her tattoos come alive, they find giant rats...this book is also a "choose your own scare (ending)" book. I loved the Goosebumps books when I was in middle school. This one was fun to read and remember what it was like to read them. Young, middle school age kids would love these books. Not recommended for those who scare easy though!

[Jessie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would you survive? Find out by reading!

[Luke hostetler · Rating 4 out of 5]

wow

[Kevin Xu · Rating 3 out of 5]

not my kind of game