“Jackpot” by Gordon Korman is a book that is part of a series. In the previous books, Griffin, Ben, Savannah, Melissa, Pitch and Logan are introduced. Griffin and Ben are best friends at Cedarville. Melissa is a computer geek, Savanah loves animals, Pitch is the best climber in town and Logan is a child actor. In the first book, an adult tricks Griffin and Ben into selling a million dollar baseball card that they found. Griffin and Ben only received $100 because of a lie.
Griffin put together a plan with Ben to steal back the card. Things did not go as planned so Griffin and Ben recruited more people to the cause. In the end, they did not get the card but, the police got involved and the adult moved away because he didn’t want anyone to find out if what he did was a crime. He gave his guard dog to the pound, which Savannah immediately adopted and trained. After many more adventures, Griffin became known as the “man with the plan”.
Darren is Griffin and Ben’s arch nemesis that is obsessed with money. So when they read an article that said that there was a large lottery ticket that nobody turned in, they hatched a plan. In the end, the police got mad at them and everyone thought they were bullies. That day someone new came named Victor Phoenix, the group quickly became friends with him because he seemed to have something in common with everyone. Except for Griffin. Victor was cold to Griffin and tried to ignore him. Griffin was the only one that did not like Victor. This disagreement soon caused all of Griffin’s friends and Griffin to drift apart. A major part of the fight is that his friends started calling Victor, “The man with the plan.”
Darren knows that there is a real lottery ticket out there so he convinces Griffin to help him search for the lottery ticket. After a rigorous search, nothing came up. Then Darren panicked and enlisted the help of Victor who asked Ben, Savannah, Logan, Pitch and Melissa to help him. The group had no idea they were really helping Darren. In the end, both teamed up and found the owner of the ticket, who accidentally used it as a bookmark. The owner gets the money and gives a good chunk to the group that helped him, for college only. Griffin learned that Victor was mean to him because he thought that Griffin was a bully and that he hated bullies. Victor learned that Darren was the real bully.
Jackpot is a very good book and is very engaging.the last part of the book is very suspenseful because of all the action that is crammed in the final pages. A major flaw, however, is that a majority of the book is just a hunt for the lottery ticket. At each place they ask about nothing turns up. The entire book is going from house to house to find the ticket. The reader gets bored with this type of writing. This is the opposite of the major flaw with most books. In most bad books there is a great idea that is not executed well. However, in this book, there was an idea that would ultimately not be great even with perfect execution which Gordon Korman had. All together I would rate this book 3 out of 5 stars.