The Goosebumps book where sports are Serious Business.
On a boring road trip, Wendy and Elliot decide to ride in the trailer instead of the back of the car. A couple of contrived coincidences later, they find themselves separated from their parents and enrolled at Camp Jellyjam, a summer camp for kids who are obsessed with sports. Since this is the 1990s, nobody has a mobile phone, and because it's a Goosebumps book, none of the payphones work. Not to worry, there are sports to play! Just don't worry that the camp counsellors go out of their way to prevent contact with the outside world. And kids keep disappearing. And there are semi-frequent earthquakes. And a girl keeps urging Wendy to run away. And the camp mascot is a purple blob monster.
It is one of the nineteen original series books that was not adapted into the 1995 TV series. It would later be adapted into an installment of the Goosebumps Graphix series, included in the Scary Summer collection, in which the protagonists are black, while minor character Rose goes from black to white.
It was later reissued in the Classic Goosebumps line in 2009 as a companion to Welcome to Camp Slither.
The book provides examples of:
- All There in the Manual: The bonus section in the reprint reveals King Jellyjam's backstory. A cup of gelatin was left in a supernatural cave.
- Ambiguous Situation: The ending makes it unclear if Buddy faced federal protection for blindly serving King Jellyjam as well as the whole "enslaving children to serve a giant purple blob". At the least, he has the freedom to come and apologize to the family for endangering Wendy and Elliott.
- Arc Words: "Only the Best" can be King Jellyjam's slaves.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The real King Jellyjam is certainly not the cute little blob depicted all over the campsite.
- Badass Adorable: Wendy is a 12-year-old girl who manages to fight back against the child-eating blob monster.
- Bat Scare: When Wendy and her roommates sneak out at night to try and find Dierdre, a swarm of bats show up out of nowhere. This at first freaks out the girls, but the bats instead were swooping down to get drinks of water from the swimming pool.
- Bait-and-Switch: In the ending, after Buddy leaves the house after giving the main characters their sixth King coin, the two smell an awful aroma, giving the impression that King Jellyjam somehow came back from the dead and found the two at their house. But it turns out that the stench is coming from their mother in the kitchen, who is making Brussels sprouts.
- Bait-and-Switch Accusation: While Wendy and her bunkmates sneak out at night to find Diedre, a patrolling counselor yells to stop, and asks what they're doing here. Wendy immediately assumes that he's talking to her, and is about to answer, but then finds out that he was talking to a different counsellor who was also patrolling.
- Big Damn Heroes: As the still hypnotized counselors are about to kill the freed children to avenge the death of their master, the police show up to rescue them. Not only do their blowing whistles break the counselors out of their trance, but this is the first time that Police Are Useless is averted in Goosebumps.
- Big Sister Instinct: When Wendy realizes that Elliott is literally on track to becoming another of Jellyjam's slaves, she tackles him off his final racecourse. As he angrily demands an explanation, Wendy shows him why she didn't want him to win, and he understands with an Oh, Crap! on seeing the real King Jellyjam.
- Bittersweet Ending: King Jellyjam is killed, the counselors are freed from his control, and the surviving campers are reunited with their families, but many children are still dead, and the councilors and surviving children will have to deal with the trauma probably for the rest of their lives.
- Blob Monster: The titular King Jellyjam is one. He initially appears to be a cute blobby mascot version for the camp. In the climax, he turns out to be real, and a man-eating villain the size of a parade float.
- Blunt "Yes": The beginning of the book has Elliott excitedly pointing out that there are no cows outside the car, in irony of his mother earlier excitedly pointing to them. She angrily asks him if he is making fun of her, to which he replies with this trope.
- Car Ride Games: At the beginning of the book, during the family road trip, Elliott keeps complaining about how bored he is. His mother suggests that they play Car Geography, to which Elliott decides to quit quickly. His mother still tries to persuade him, but it's cut short by Wendy sugesting that she and him instead ride in the trailer that's behind the car.
- Child Eater: King Jellyjam eats children who don't work hard enough.
- Competition Freak: Elliot is a real nut about beating everyone else at sports.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: Unlike Wendy, who dives to the ground the first time she encounters a quake at the camp, the other people are not even fazed from their games. Buddy explains to her that this sort of thing happens so much that the other campers, whom all arrived at the camp before Wendy and her brother did, got used to it.
- Cruel Twist Ending: Averted, this is one of the few Goosebumps books that does not end with a mean-spirited twist.
- Drives Like Crazy: When the trailer that Wendy and Elliot are staying in unhooks and rolls down a hill, the former at first thinks that their mother is driving. Wendy narrates that their mother always drives like a crazy person, and if she thinks she is going thirty-five, she is really going eighty.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Protagonist Wendy discovers the truth behind the camp, and thanks to her bravery and quick thinking, evil monster King Jellyjam is killed, which releases all the counselors from his hypnotic hold and saves the kids enslaved into washing him nonstop, and shortly afterwards Wendy and Elliot are reunited with their parents and get to go back home.
- Exact Words: Buddy says that the camp's earthquakes are caused by "gas under the ground". Technically, it's true.
- Foreshadowing: Twice, counselors cryptically convey to Wendy what the penalty for not working hard enough is. One tells her that the camp slogan "Only the Best" is a warning. Buddy later says that "King Jellyjam would never approve of you standing around doing nothing". He certainly wouldn't.
- Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: As he is dying, King Jellyjam looks at Wendy and points at her, indicating that he blames her for him dying. Then he starts to grab her.
- The Glomp: After Wendy defeats King Jellyjam, the children that are now free from his tyranny give her one in a Group Hug, because she rescued them. Wendy mentions that there were Tears of Joy mixed in.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: King Jellyjam suffocates from his own stench after the campers stop washing him.
- I Gave My Word: After the whole adventure, Buddy shows up at the house that Wendy and Elliot live in. He gives the latter his sixth King coin, because even though they are not at camp anymore, Elliot did cross the finish line first and he earned it.
- I Let You Win: Wendy has no incentive to win contests; she tends to let Elliott win because he's her little brother, and she does the same with Deirdre during the swimming race. Buddy tells her that he knows that she can do great things if she pushes herself. He was lying; Buddy wanted her to win so she'd be another slave for King Jellyjam.
- Ill-Timed Sneeze: When spying on the hypnotized counselors, Wendy feels herself about to sneeze, and tries to stop it. It works the first time, but not the second time. This leads to Buddy pointing at her, causing her to try and hide.
- Light Is Not Good: All of the counselors at Camp Jellyjam have entirely white clothing as part of their uniforms. And they are also under the brainwashing rule of King Jellyjam to train and bring him his new victims.
- Mind-Control Conspiracy: The camp counselors are all enthralled to King Jellyjam and the camp itself is just a giant front to acquire new slaves for him.
- Mistaken for Quake: The frequent earthquakes are actually King Jellyjam burping underground.
- Nightmare Face: The all-too-innocent wide-eyed Slasher Smiles on the cover of the book.
- No Time to Explain: Wendy does this to Elliot. After saving him from winning his sixth King coin, she urges him to follow her to the lair of King Jellyjam so he would see the creature himself and believe her. He does, but she takes the moment to instead call action upon herself.
- Our Monsters Are Weird: King Jellyjam, a giant blob monster who, according to the bonus material in the Classic Goosebumps edition, was born from a combination of snails, gelatin and radioactivity.
- Serious Business: Winning a sport and getting a King Coin. Indeed, when Wendy says that she is going to the swimming pool to splash around, her roommates look at her as if she is crazy and reply that she has to race instead. And when she lets Dierdre win instead, a counselor pulls her aside right afterwards to warn her to not do that in a warning of pure seriousness.
- Stepford Smiler: The Camp Jellyjam counselors, if the original cover (the one with the creepy-looking Gilbert Gottfried-esque counselor) is any indication.
- Summer Campy: It's a children's horror novel set at a summer camp.
- Sunglasses at Night: Wendy notices that Billy, a patrolling counselor that one of her roommates thinks is cute, has a dark blue pair of sunglasses, and she even notes that it is during nighttime.
- Taking You with Me: This seems to be what King Jellyjam thinks when grabbing Wendy to eat her as he is dying. If he was going to die, he thought that he might as well eat the person responsible for his death in the first place. Thankfully, he croaks before he can swallow her.
- Token Minority: One small scene features Rose, the only black character in the book as well as the first explicitly black character in the series.
- Tomboyish Baseball Cap: One of the roommates that Wendy has at Camp Jellyjam, Ivy, has a Cubs baseball cap over her frizzy blonde hair. She is also very enthusiastic about sports.
- Walking Spoiler: The fact that King Jellyjam is real is so much one that he doesn't even appear on the book's cover. The new cover changes this, though.
