Mark Rowe loves playing the Jungle King computer game. But one day, his aunt Benna's assistant shows up at their door, bringing a hundred-year-old shrunken head as a gift from Benna (who's been exploring the jungle island of Baladora for ten years). She also reveals Benna wants her to bring Mark and the head back to Baladora so he can explore a real jungle. However, things are not as they seem, as Mark soon discovers the head's strange connection to a mysterious Baladoran power called Jungle Magic.
It was adapted into the first and second episodes of the fourth season of the 1995 TV series.
It was later reissued in the Classic Goosebumps line in 2009 as a companion release to Help! We Have Strange Powers!.
The book provides examples of:
- And I'm the Queen of Sheba: Kareen is telling Mark that to find his Aunt Benna, he needs to go into one path through the jungle, and work his way along. Mark asks him And Then What?, and she replies that he'll use his Jungle Magic to take him the rest of the way. Mark sarcastically thinks sure, and next week, he'll flap his arms and fly to the moon.
- Ant Assault: Mark suffers this when he wakes up the next morning to find an army of red ants crawling all over his body! It takes him to use his Jungle Magic to make them get off of him.
- Ask a Stupid Question...: While Mark is stuck in a hole in the ground, Kareen comes by wanting to help him, and he asks her to get him out of there.Mark: I guess you didn't bring a ladder with you?Kareen: (snipes) Uh - no, Mark.Mark: (internally) I guess she doesn't have much of a sense of humor.
- Badass Adorable: Mark, who not only fights back against the villains, he defeats them with the Jungle Magic he was given.
- Big "NO!": Mark lets out two in a row when he first sees his shrunken head smile and its' eyes glowing at him.
- Binomium ridiculus: According to Carolyn, Mark's aunt Benna discovered a kind of crawling vine plant that she named after herself: Benna-lepticus. Or something like that.
- Book Snap: Mark does this to Aunt Benna's notebook when he finishes reading it, in which the last entry stated how the Hawlings family planned to destroy Baladora along with her and Mark, to which he decides to escape from the island.
- By the Lights of Their Eyes: While walking through the jungle at night, Mark sees a pair of eyes staring at him through the dark, followed by more and more pairs. He soon realizes that those are coming from a pile of shrunken heads facing him.
- Cathartic Exhalation: Mark does this when he feels sure that the tiger that was trying to attack him is out of sight.
- Chekhov's Gun: Early on, Jessica scratches Mark's shrunken head. Later, it gets mixed in with other heads and the scratch is how Mark is able to identify it.
- Crocodile Tears: In order to see if Kareen's telling the truth about wanting to help him and his aunt, Mark shines his flashlight to her face, and sees a single tear running down her cheek. This is what convinces him that she's on his side. It turns out, no, she was just a great actress.
- Cruel to Be Kind: At one point while the pilot of Mark and Carolyn's plane, Ernesto, is flying them to Baladora, he makes a cruel joke to Mark in which he pretends that the plane has a problem, and they need to jump even though they don't have parachutes. Once Mark figures out that this was a prank, he calls Ernesto mean. The pilot warns him that this was to make sure that he gets used to thinking fast in the jungle. Indeed, the jungle turns out to be just like he warned Mark.
- A Dog Named "Cat": In Mark's pretend jungle game, he let his sister Jessica be Cheetah, his talking chimpanzee.
- Double Take: Occurs during the climax of the book, when Mark is looking through the shrunken heads to find the one that's his, and he eventually gets one that has a white scratch on its ear. Mark is about to toss it back onto the pile when he stops and realizes that this head got that scratch from his sister scratching it, which means this one is his shrunken head.
- Dramatic Drop: When he's told that he's going to Baladora, Mark's first response is to drop his spoon into his bowl of Froot Loops. This is followed with a Jaw Drop, and then a Happy Dance.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: The titular shrunken head is actually meant to protect Mark. The villains are the humans who want to steal his powers.
- Incredible Shrinking Man: After a mighty scuffle when he loses his shrunken head and struggles to find it, Mark eventually does and uses it along with the Jungle Magic to save him and his Aunt Benna. It ends up doing this by shrinking Kareen, Carolyn, and Dr. Hawlings to the size of mice. They then scampering over teh grass until they disappear into the jungle.
- Just One More Level!: Mark keeps playing his jungle video game in the beginning of the book. His friends Joel and Eric repeatedly ask him to play a different game, but he refuses and insists on one more game. The two eventually just leave the house to ride skateboards.
- Last Chance to Quit: Dr. Hawlings tells Benna that because he likes her and Mark, he is giving them one last chance to give him the Jungle Magic, or else he will force her and Mark into a pot and boil them so to shrink their heads. This attempt ends up being his own undoing as Benna uses it to fight him and Mark uses the shrunken head to shrink his body.
- Mad Scientist: Dr. Hawlings, who wants the Jungle Magic for his own wicked purposes.
- The Magic Goes Away: After the Hawlings family is defeated and the Rowe family is back safe in their home, Aunt Benna removes the Jungle Magic from Mark.
- Mama Bear: Or rather, Mama Tiger. During his adventure in the jungle, Mark encounters a pair of tiger cubs, and their mother, who instinctively (and not realizing he means no harm) acts in a threatening manner towards Mark in order to protect the cubs from him.
- Miming the Cues: Mark's Aunt Benna tells him to wait until her signal, when she blinks her eyes three times, to pull out his shrunken head and say the magic word to use the Jungle Magic in order to save themselves from Dr. Hawlings. But when she does it, he takes it out and almost uses it, but Dr. Hawlings snatches it out of his hands before he can say the magic word.
- Mosquito Miscreants: Mark encounters plenty of these during his trip through the jungle to find Aunt Benna. And earlier, when he first arrives, he notices that the Hawlings cabin has mosquito netting all over the windows. Carolyn explains to him that if he's never seen a mosquito as big as his head, he will. Mark wonders if she was joking or not.
- Needle in a Stack of Needles: When finally coming to blows, Dr. Hawlings prevents Mark from using his shrunken head by throwing it into a pile of similar-looking, but non-magical, shrunken heads. It is only when Mark goes through them and finds one that has a scratch on one of its' ears, just like his sister did with his, that he realizes that he has the right one.
- Nightmare Sequence: Mark has one whilst sleeping in the jungle. He dreams about dozens of shrunken heads floating around him, sneering at him, chanting, "Hurry, Mark. Hurry."
- Product Placement: Mark's sister Jessica collects Koosh Balls.
- Quicksand Sucks: Mark gets himself stuck in a puddle of this on his journey. He has to use his jungle magic to attract vines within his reach to pull himself out.
- Rule of Three: Kareen gets a vine to have Mark pull his way out of a ditch, and he makes attempts to jump up and grab it, and then climb his way out. On his first two tries, he missed the end of the vine by a few inches. On his third attempt, he grabbed it and got his way out.
- Shrunken Head: Main character Mark Rowe receives a shrunken head from his aunt, who's a scientist researching the island of Baladora, home of the long-gone Oloyan people — a tribe of head-shrinkers. He later finds out that it glows because he possesses "Jungle Magic".
- Small Role, Big Impact: Mark's sister Jessica is mainly shown at the beginning of the book, and makes a brief appearance at the end of it, but she actually makes an unintentionally crucial part in the climax. She yanks Mark's new shrunken head from his hand, and in the process she makes a scratch on one of the head's ears. This same scratch is what Mark is able to identify it as his when he briefly loses it and is able to use it to save him and his aunt.
- Sore Loser: Mark accuses his friends, Eric and Joel, of being this for not wanting to play his jungle game. This may be part of the reason, the other part is they're just sick of playing the exact same game over and over.
- Stewed Alive: Dr. Hawlings threatens to do this to Mark and his Aunt Benna with an enormous bubbling pot in order to shrink their heads if they don't give him the Jungle Magic. Luckily, he isn't able to use it.
- Super-Empowering: After Mark's brought back to Baladora, it's revealed that Mark's Aunt Benna discovered the secret of Jungle Magic, but used hypnosis to transfer it to Mark when he was four in order to keep the power safe from Dr. Hawlings.
- That Liar Lies: Mark is interrogating Kareen on some warnings about her family that his aunt had written in a notebook he found, and he asks her if her family actually knows where his aunt is. Kareen replies that she doesn't really know, and she really wants to help him find his aunt. Mark's response. "That's a lie!"
- Vine Swing: The main character in Mark's jungle game constantly does this. In his actual jungle journey, he doesn't swing on them, he merely climbs them.
- Vine Tentacles: In order to escape from quicksand, Mark uses his shrunken head and Jungle Magic to have vines that are nearby rescue him. The vines act like slithering snakes, and save Mark by wrapping around him and pulling him out, and then curling quickly into the tall weeds after they save him.
- Was It All a Lie?: When the ruse that Kareen was following Mark to lead her father to him and his aunt is revealed, he furiously asks her this. She looks at the ground in guilt and admits that the part of her becoming friends with him was not, and she genuinely likes him.
- Wham Line: When Mark's finally reunited with his aunt Benna, all seems finally well. But then Kareen, who followed Mark, raised her voice to announce herself.Kareen: Over here, Daddy! Over here! I found Benna, Daddy! Hurry!
