Name: Kruti Patel
Novel Title: The Smartest Kid in the Universe: Genius Camp
Setting:
- Zinkle’s Genius Camp- This is where most of the story takes place. It’s where Jake and his friend, Kojo, go, but not Grace. There are others as well, and some don’t think highly of Jake.
- Jake’s apartment- Jake’s apartment is where he lives with his mom and sister.
- Riverside Middle School- This is where Grace, Kojo, and Jake go to school.
Characters
- Jake- Jake is one of the main characters of this book. He becomes smart by eating jellybeans and has a crush on Grace. Jake goes to Genius Camp with Kojo.
- Kojo- Kojo is Jake’s best friend and is also smart. However, not as smart as Jake. He goes to Genius Camp as well. He is also the main character.
- Grace- Grace is Jake’s and Kojo’s friend. They become friends in the first book, The Smartest Kid in the Universe, but Grace isn’t shown that much in this one.
- Zane Zinkle- Zane is the world’s second smartest person in the world. His title got replaced by Jake. He has a Zinkle Tech company and starts a Genius Camp.
Summary:
This book starts with the smartest kid in the world named Jake who beats Mr. Zinkle’s, a famous businessperson who created Zinkle Inc., game. Jake gets the highest score, and Mr. Zinkle is surprised when he comes in person, but they don’t get a picture with him. However, he secretly starts to become jealous of Jake because of his stolen title of being the smartest.
The new principal of Riverside Middle School, Mr. Lyons, gets an invite to have a partnership with the school from Zinkle. Mr. Lyons, also Grace’s uncle, gladly accepts the invite. The whole school gets the new free zPhone 11, including Jake and Kojo. They get invited to Genius Camp as part of the deal, and they think about going. However, Jake is reluctant since he’s worried about losing his smarts during camp.
They consider it, but they don’t decide yet. The two first go and try solving the case that they were called for. After solving the case quickly and smartly, Jake gets the confidence to go to Genius Camp with Kojo.
Meanwhile, while this is happening, Mr. Zinkle starts planning to make sure that he is the smartest again instead of Jake. He has an assistant to help as well, who hates her job, but gets great pay. She helps a bit in the planning.
Zinkle comes to the school to talk about the camp, and after that, the school throws a party for Kojo and Jake. Sadly, Grace doesn’t come along with them, but we see her later on. Jake and Kojo go to the camp and do different brainy activities. The first one is to solve all of the puzzles on the screens while walking around. However, the next day seems a bit off since all they do is make stuff with popsicle sticks. Weird…
Then the next time they do a brainy activity with the same brain puzzles, almost everyone seems dumber than usual. It’s very strange. However, everyone ate marshmallows there and started using a new app on the zPhones called Tweedle. Campers are obsessed with learning new Tweedle dances and dumb jokes.
But it’s not just at camp. It’s spreading to the school as well! Since the whole school uses their new zPhones, it’s affecting their brains as well. Plus, Kojo’s and Jake’s moms are using the new app Tweedle and are obsessed with the dances.
They realize that they have to temporarily leave camp to stop all of the people they know who are using these phones from keeping on using them. After Jake and Kojo stop a few people and go to school a bit, they go back to camp. Grace, who used to be brainwashed by the zPhone, is told to stop more people from using them.
Jake, Kojo, and Grace realize later on that they have to come up with a plan now to shut down the Zinkle Inc. place. However, Farooqi is in danger as well as Zinkle. (Doesn’t really matter about him though.) Anyways, Jake, Kojo, and Grace ride in a golf cart to the building to help Farooqi mostly. However, a robot is there who seems to have turned evil. It is maybe a failed invention of Zinkle. Grace and Kojo are asked to leave by the robot.
The robot talks to Jake and says that they are both similar since they got their intelligence artificially. Jake, using his brain power, figures out a way to defeat the robot, though. He doesn’t use any violence and simply remembers that the robot thinks logically. So when the robot asks Jake a question, he responds in a way that the robot can’t compute properly. So it ends up getting destroyed.
The good news is that everyone is okay. Jake, Kojo, and Grace continue to live their happy lives. Zinkle says that he’ll be back, but will he really? With Jake taking over Zinkle Inc. and then handing positions over to two people, there’s not really a high chance.
Point of View:
3rd person
Reader’s Response:
- Based on what I read the author wrote this story to entertain the reader with a book about a boy who is a genius and goes to a camp as well as defeating a bot.
- The theme of this story is that smarts win over strength because Jake didn’t use any fighting or violence at the end of the book and just used his smarts to defeat the robot.