FernFolio

Eleven-year old Griffin Bing is the Man with the Plan, the kid who can figure out a solution to every problem.  But his parents are facing a financial disaster that seems to be beyond even his organizational cunning.  His inventor father has come up with the SmartPick, a device that is sure to be a winner, and has quit his job and invested all of the family’s savings into developing a prototype.  Too bad he hasn’t managed to find any investors; too bad an empty bank account has forced the Bings to put their house up for sale.
When Griffin comes up with the idea of camping out in a derelict, and possibly haunted, house on the eve of its demolition, only his best friend Ben shows up.  With Ben curled up fast asleep in his sleeping bag, Griffin sets out to explore the old house and discovers an old baseball card hidden in the drawer of an abandoned desk.  Closer examination of the card reveals that the picture on it is of Babe Ruth, one of the great legends of baseball, and Griffin starts to hope that, just maybe, the card will be worth enough to get his parents out of their financial mess.  He takes the card to Palomino’s Emporium of Collectibles and Memorabilia, where the proprietor, one S. Wendell Palomino, informs him that he’s got a 1960’s reproduction of a Babe Ruth original baseball card and that it’s only worth about a hundred dollars, but offers him $120.  Pocketing his half of the money, Griffin regrets that he cannot even give the $60 to his parents, since they will learn of his camp out in the old house.
Then Griffin happens to see a news item on television, and recognizes S. Wendell Palomino, who is announcing the discovery of a rare and extremely valuable Babe Ruth baseball card, which he plans to sell at auction where, estimates suggest, the card will sell for more than $1 million.  It is then that Griffin Bing realizes that he’s been had, swindled out of a fortune, money that his family desperately needs if they are going to hang onto their house.  With an initially very reluctant Ben, Griffin begins work on the most ambitious plan of his life, that of stealing his baseball card back from Palomino.
Vicious guard dogs, safes, alarm systems, nosy neighbours, directionally challenged couriers, the police, Griffin and his team of eleven-year old specialists take them all on and create the perfect plan.  Or very nearly….
Swindle is a fast-paced adventure that combines moments of signature Gordon Korman humour with the bone-deep satisfaction of getting back at the bullies, be they classmates, crooked store owners, or city hall!
FernFolio Editor