SuitabookAttack of the Beastly Babysitter
Robert Lawrence Stine
- Reading
- Preview the opening together if scares may be sensitive, and agree that stopping or choosing a different branch is fine. Afterwards, compare two endings and discuss how changing a choice changes the experience.
- Themes
- Choice and consequence: The reader chooses between frightening games and locations, with more than 20 possible endings. The structure foregrounds agency and the consequences of selecting different routes, although the moral meaning of those choices is not established.
- Fear as entertainment: A babysitter linked to KidScare introduces games involving a ball pit, a tomb and a rat. The premise clearly uses frightening situations for entertainment, but it is not clear whether the book treats them as comic, troubling, empowering or otherwise.
- Worth knowing
- Some situations involve explicit peril: a game may mean never going home, while other choices include drowning in a ball pit and escaping a tomb containing an unknown rat. The tone appears sensational and fantastical, but the ending treatment is unclear.