Just two books after a headless ghost, we continue the headless hijinks with a trip to the jungle. I remember liking this one previously, so it'll be interesting to see how it fares on a second go. It's also the beginning of 1996 and Goosebumps, and it's going to be an interesting year. But let's get a head start with How I Got My Shrunken Head.
HOW I GOT MY SHRUNKEN HEAD
RELEASE MONTH: January, 1996
FRONT TAGLINE: Heads up!
COVER STORY
I want so badly to like this cover. I like that it has some of the traits best known from Tim Jacobus. Warped perspective, Converse sneakers, checker floors. You can easily tell who made this piece of art. I even like the nondescript "UNIVERSITY" banner on the wall. And then there's the shrunken head. Granted, it does look freaky. Not enough to scare me, but I always did find it disturbing. The problem is... it's not shrunken. It's as big as a normal human head. It's definitely bigger than how the book describes. Still, that issue aside, another decent work.
TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE!
What has two eyes, a mouth, and wrinkly green skin? Mark's shrunken head. It's a present from his Aunt Benna. A gift from the jungle island of Baladora.
Mark can't wait to show the kids at school his shrunken head. It's so ugly. So gross. So awesome.
But late one night the head starts to glow. Because it's no ordinary head. It gives Mark a strange power. A magical power. A dangerous power...
STORY
Our protagonist is Mark Rowe. He's a kid who's really into video games, and is also described as chubby because of course he is. I'd say Stine talking about kids' weights is not ideal, but that'll come to a head a few books from now. His favorite game is Jungle King, which through description reminds me most of Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure. He really, really gets into the game, often screaming "KAH-LEE-AHH!". It's his catchphrase, but he doesn't know why exactly that is. But it's enough to make his friends head home early.
Someone knocks on the door and Mark answers it. It's a woman here to give him a present. A shrunken head. The woman introduces herself as Carolyn Hawlings. She is an assistant to Mark's Aunt Benna, a sort of Jane Goodall-like explorer. She's been searching the jungles of the fictional island of Baladora, and sent Mark this weird shrunken head. Mark loves it, but also feels like there's something weird about it. He thinks he hears it talking at night, but it's just his sister Jessica bothering him. But when the head does start to move on its own, Mark tries to get his family to see it, but no such luck. You know, redundant is a great word and it fits most of the thirties well.
Mark gets news that Aunt Benna has sent for him to come to Baladora. He takes the shrunken head and flies there with Carolyn. But he doesn't meet with his aunt, but instead a man in a lab. This is Carolyn's brother, Dr. Richard Hawlings, as well as his daughter Kareen. Dr. Hawlings tells Mark that Aunt Benna has been missing for weeks. And the only way they can find her is through Mark. You see, Mark has something called "jungle magic". When Mark was four, he was given these powers by Benna. But since that was eight years ago, Mark has no idea what this even means.
Mark walks around for a bit and ends up in a room filled with shrunken heads. As well as a journal from Aunt Benna that speaks of Dr. Hawlings. It says that he can't be trusted and that he wants the jungle magic for himself to gain ultimate power, as well as shrink Benna and Mark's heads. As he runs off, he runs into Kareen who tells Mark that she wants to help him find his aunt. Mark agrees, because he is a really stupid kid, not even considering the fact that this is Dr. Hawlings' daughter, so he's walking into the biggest trap imaginable. He goes to sleep and gets a vision of shrunken heads before he wakes up covered in fire ants. He screams Kah-Lee-Ahh, and it causes the ants to disappear. Mark figures that maybe that's the words to summon jungle magic.
More perils befall Mark, including falling into quicksand. He tries the magic words, but nothing happens. When he holds up the head, it manages to make vines form to help him escape. However, he ends up face to face with a tiger. He calls out the jungle magic again which saves him... sort of? He escapes the tiger, but falls into a pit. Kareen saves him and the two manage to find Aunt Benna. She panics seeing Kareen, but Mark, being stupid, says she's cool. Then reveals the jungle magic aloud. And wouldn't you believe it, this was all a set up. Kareen brings the Hawlings siblings to Benna and Mark and reveals the powers to them.
Both Mark and Aunt Benna are captured, then brought to Dr. Hawlings who is ready to shrink their heads if they don't teach them how to use the jungle magic. Mark raises the shrunken head, but it gets knocked into a pile of heads. As Benna tries to fight off Dr. Hawlings, Mark dives into the pile and finds the right one. He raises it up and says the magic words again. Suddenly, the Hawlings family all begin to shrink smaller and smaller until they're about mouse size. They then run off into the forest, never to be seen again.
TWIST ENDING
Mark and Aunt Benna return home as Aunt Benna tells Mark that she removed his jungle magic, since I guess we're never going to have another situation like this. Mark gets to keep his shrunken head. He takes the head to school when suddenly it starts talking. It really wants to tell everyone about the tiger.
CONCLUSION
How I Got My Shrunken Head feels a lot like how The Abominable Snowman of Pasadena should have been. Set us up in a mostly new environment, in this case a jungle island, and fill us up with tons of action and exciting set pieces. And as such, we get a far stronger book to read this time around. But I'd be remiss if I said that doing any book about jungle magic is dicey, particularly involving shrunken heads and stuff, but this feels like the tamest take on this concept ever. Never feeling super uncomfortable or hard to come back to in 2021. Like, they could have filled this up with "savage natives" and stuff like that, but nothing. How very restrained of Stine for once. But given he writes a "Give Yourself Goosebumps" called Deep in the Jungle of Doom that does involve a misanthropic group of natives called the Muglani, I'm not exactly saying he's off the hook either.
The only real issue I have with this book is they make Kareen too obvious as a double agent. I think if they hadn't so quickly revealed Dr. Hawlings as the villain of the piece, had Mark go out on his own to find Aunt Benna for other reasons, then have Kareen join him for the majority, only for when they find Benna for her to reveal the truth about Dr. Hawlings, it would have given the big reveal of her being evil some impact. And the twist is just okay. More cute than creepy, I guess? But with some solid scares with the tiger and the ants, as well as a well handled flow and decent adventure, this one is a strong way to end the thirties. A book that's not head of the class, but still strong regardless.
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