Eragon is not plagiarized, it's merely derivative. I was speaking of the effect of the mid-teenage author with influential friends or family, buying enough shelf space to turn a bad book into a monster bestseller. Child prodigies sell.

As for the difficulty of school projects, as far as I can tell, education in general is drastically dumbed down from what it was when I was in school; between that and constant teaching to endless standardized tests, the whole thing is a sorry mess.