Name: How I Got My Shrunken Head
ISBN: 9781925065336

R. L. Stine

Introducing JUNGLE MAGIC. 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. And Mark can’t wait to show the kids at school! But late one night the head starts to glow. Because it’s actually no ordinary head. It gives Mark a strange power. A magical power. A dangerous power... Now with all-new bonus material including a quicksand survival guide and other terrifying tips.

How I Got My Shrunken Head

Receiving a wrinkled, green shrunken head as a gift from his aunt, Mark cannot wait to show the gruesome object to his friends at school, but when night falls, the head begins to glow, and Mark is given a strange power.

Maggie Gordon

Mark is obsessed with video games about the jungle, to the point of driving his friends a bit crazy. But it turns out there's a reason for that because he's got JUNGLE MAGIC. Creative naming there, Stine.

So Mark is being a normal everyday kid who screams out a nonsense word every so often until his auntie sends him a shrunken head and tells him to come visit her in the jungle. Mom and dad think this is totally okay, so off Mark goes! Perhaps they should have had him check in with a psychologist before he left since he claims that the shrunken head was floating and glowing though...

Mark arrives in magical jungle land to discover that his aunt has gone missing and her scientist friends are trying to find her. Or kill her. Hard to tell. She's discovered some sort of magic that the other scientists want, but she thinks that they will destroy the beautiful jungle so she's hiding out.

Mark escapes the other scientists and uses the head and his made up word to activate JUNGLE MAGIC which, as it turns out, his aunt gave him when he was four. He finds his aunt with the help of the scientist's kid, but she double crosses them! The evil scientist is going to shrink their heads, but Mark uses JUNGLE MAGIC to shrink them down to the size of mice. Then his aunt takes the magic back and sends him home. 

The fuck just happened? Also, congrats on writing a book about a place where non-white live and magic used by non-white people and then having the story be populated entirely by white Americans. GOOD JOB.

How I Got My Shrunken Head

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