Linda Ulleseit

Determination and Trust

by Sachin

In the book Swindle, by Gordon Korman, Griffin gets cheated out of a baseball card. He gathers a group of friends (and enemies) to get the card back. Griffin learns to be determined and to trust others.

In the beginning of the book, Griffin is having a sleepover with his friend Ben in the Rockford house, a house that is supposedly haunted. While exploring, Griffin finds a baseball card, which he thinks will be worth a lot of money. At an antique shop, Griffin tries to sell the card. The owner of the shop, Wendell Palomino, buys the card for $120, even though the card was actually worth millions of dollars! When Griffin finds out that he’d been swindled, he assembles a group of people to get the card back.  At first, they try to find the card in Wendell’s antique shop, but it wasn’t there. That was when Griffin thought that the card might be in Wendell’s home. They enter Wendell’s residence through the home’s skylight, got the card, and left, while Wendell was at a baseball game!

You should always be determined. In Swindle, Griffin is determined to get the card that was rightfully his. He came up with a plan, a backup plan, and other things that take time and effort to make. This Christmas, I am absolutely determined to get a Christmas present. I’ve been helping my parents, cleaning my room, and so many other chores. In the book Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien, Gollum is determined to get the ring from Frodo, the hobbit. Gollum does many things, such as leading Frodo into Shelob’s lair.

I think that everyone should trust each other. Griffin doesn’t trust one of the people in his group, a boy named Darren Vader. Darren actually helps in the heist, by bringing his ladder to get the group up to the skylight. My sister never trusted me. She thought I was a nuisance. But one time, my dog, Einstein, started to jump on my sister continuously, making her scared. I came to the rescue, and told Einstein to sit down, which he did. In Lord of the Rings, Frodo trusts Sam dearly. He trusted him with the job of carrying all their precious food and blankets.

Swindle, by Gordon Korman, is about Griffin Bing getting swindled out of a card that was rightfully his. Outraged, he forms a group of people that he learns to trust. He is determined to get his card back.