SOLVED. YA Thriller about a babysitter who is kidnapped along with her three charges. Read in the early 2000s, but the book was probably published earlier (possibly in the 70s). [s]

[Meredith]

The story was about a girl who is babysitting for a family with three kids (I think two boys and a girl, though it could be two girls and a boy) who are all kidnapped and held for ransom. They are kept in either an upstairs room or an attic and the babysitter makes paper dolls out of National Geographic magazines to keep the kids entertained. There are guard dogs outside the room, but she tames them by feeding them meat from the food they are given. The littlest child (a girl) cannot pronounce the word "kitchen" - instead she says "chicken" - which leads to a semi-comedic scene with one of the kidnappers which eventually leads them to being allowed in the kitchen of the house they are being held in. The babysitter does eventually aid in the escape by climbing out onto the roof, I think?

Besides that, I remember there being a slightly uncomfortable scene near the beginning of the book where the babysitter thinks about how her friend is wearing a shirt with a rose on it that is meant to attract boys to look at her chest.

I read this sometime between 2005-2007, but given that my school library kept a lot of old books from previous decades it was probably published before the new millennium (for some reason I feel like the book had a 70s-ish vibe so it may have been published in that decade - not a historical fiction)

[inaword]

Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job

This one, maybe?

[Meredith]

Yes!! That’s the one!

[bookel]

Solved children's/YA fiction. Willo Davis Roberts is excellent.
Free to borrow: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15125...