She better be getting paid well for this.
Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job is a 1985 children's suspense novel by Willo Davis Roberts.
Trying to make some money, Darcy takes on a babysitting job looking after three children from a rich family — six-year-old Jeremy, four-year-old Melissa, and two-year-old Shana. She's worried about keeping all three children from getting into too much mischief, but a bigger problem presents itself when three men kidnap her and the children to hold them for ransom. Armed with only her wits, Darcy has to look after her charges and keep them safe until rescue comes...but what if it doesn't?
For another book by the same author, see Don't Hurt Laurie!
This book provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Darcy and Irene discover their friend Diana hiding out in the park, having run away from her abusive father, who beats her so often that she has visible bruises. They set her up in a tree house until her older brother can pay her bus fare to get her to her aunt's house.
- A-Cup Angst: Darcy's friend Irene wears a T-shirt with a design that she hopes will keep people from noticing her flat chest, though Darcy thinks it calls attention to it instead. She has a pretty face, though, so boys notice her anyway.
- Artistic License – Animal Care: Darcy feeds the guard dogs peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Grapes and grape jelly are very toxic to dogs.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Pa Hazen makes the mistake of kicking one of the guard dogs, and it predictably tears up his leg.
- Bedsheet Ladder: Darcy and her babysitting charges have been kidnapped and are being held captive in a room with a mattress and blanket. She tries to make a rope from the blanket, but it turns out to be too strong to be torn by hand.
- Big Bad: Pa Hazen, who abuses his daughter Diana and ropes his sons into kidnapping Darcy and the Foster children to hold them for ransom.
- Covers Always Lie: The cover shows a scared Darcy facing a pair of angry snarling dogs with the caption, "Three bratty kids are the least of Darcy's problems!", implying the dogs belong to the family she babysits for. In fact, the dogs belong to the men who kidnap Darcy and her charges, and actually turn out to be fairly docile around the children, as they don't like the kidnappers much either.
- Department of Child Disservices: Diana is being abused by her father. When protective services came to the house, he lied to them about her being a difficult child and getting bruises from being clumsy and falling down. She decided her only choice was to run away and hide out until she could move in with her aunt.
- Domestic Abuse: Not only does Diana's father abuse his daughters, it's implied he does the same to his wife.Henry: Ma's scared of the old man; she wouldn't do anything even if she found out, which she's not going to do. Not unless you're stupid enough to tell her, and then it'll be Pa who'll kill you.
- Eye Scream: The last day that Ellen was babysitting the Foster kids, Melissa tried to shampoo Shana's hair and got soap in her eyes. Shana screamed so much that Melissa was terrified she'd blinded her.
- The Ghost:
- Okie is the old man who is the caretaker of the house where the Hazens are keeping Darcy and the Foster children hostage. However, he himself is never seen.
- He has a granddaughter who also never appears, but Darcy and the children find her playroom and toys while exploring the house. Darcy speculates that Okie's guard dogs became fond of his granddaughter, and that's why they are not hostile towards Shana.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Two-year-old Shana has blonde hair and blue eyes, and is the youngest and most innocent of the Foster children.
- Kidnapper's KFC: While Darcy and the Foster kids are being held hostage by the Hazens, they get McDonald's for dinner. The food becomes a Chekhov's Gun when the kids use some of it to tame the guard dogs as part of their escape plan.
- Kids Hate Vegetables: While kidnapped, one of the meals the Foster kids get includes coleslaw, which none of them want.
- Men Can't Keep House: When Darcy sees Jeremy's room, she notes that it's a lot neater than her brothers' rooms, which have toys and books and records and orange peelings scattered about.
- Massive Numbered Siblings:
- Darcy has five brothers, and is the only girl in her family.
- Diana has four siblings, all of them older than her. Her sister Ellen moved out and got married to escape their father's abuse, her brother George is in boot camp, and her other two brothers, Dan and Henry, are involved in kidnapping Darcy and the Foster children.
- Microwave Misuse: While babysitting at the Fosters' house, Darcy tries to cook some bacon on a plastic plate in the microwave, causing the plate to melt and make a mess. The book was written in 1985, when microwaves weren't nearly as common as they are nowadays.
- Narrative Profanity Filter: Pa Hazen curses at the dogs when he finds out they've let the kids escape. Darcy comments, "My mom would have washed anybody's mouth out with soap for using the kind of words he was yelling. The gist of it was that we were gone, and the dogs had let us go. Miss Jacobson would have flunked him in grammar, but he knew more cuss words than I'd ever heard before."
- Nice, Mean, and In-Between: The three kidnappers, the Hazen brothers and their father. Dan is the nice one, who refuses to hurt any of the kids and plays Donkey Kong with Jeremy. Henry is the in-between one who's not as vicious as Pa Hazen, but isn't nice, either. Pa Hazen is the mean one, who abuses his own children (and his wife), kicks the guard dogs and is the mastermind behind the kidnapping.
- One Degree of Separation: The men who kidnap Darcy and the Foster children turn out to be the brothers and abusive father of her friend Diana.
- Precocious Crush: Darcy's friend Irene (who is 13) has had a crush on her big brother Tim (who is 17) as long as she can remember. She hopes she'll be old enough when she's 17 herself and he's 21, but Darcy says he'll probably be at the police academy by then.
- Shout-Out:
- Too Smart for Strangers: On Darcy's first day babysitting the Foster children, a man (implied to be one of the Hazens) comes to the door, claiming to be from the gas company. Darcy says she can't let him in, and asks him to show his ID through the window. She can't read the ID he holds up, and notices that there's not any gas company van on the street, so she tells him to come back with police if it's really an emergency.
- Wicked Wasps: Darcy and Jeremy subdue their kidnappers by dropping a wasp's nest on them.
- Would Hurt a Child: Pa Hazen and his sons kidnap three small children and their babysitter. Darcy overhears a conversation that she interprets as Pa Hazen intending to kill them all after he gets the ransom.
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Dan goes along with his father's and brother's kidnapping plot, but flatly refuses to actually hurt any of the children.Dan: Listen, I'm not going to hurt any kids. Holding 'em for ransom is one thing, but hurting 'em is something else.
