Zoobreak by Gordon Korman is the second book in the Swindle series, immediately following the wildly popular inaugural book Swindle. In Swindle, the main character Griffin Bing and his best friend, Ben Slovak, stumble upon a 1920 Babe Ruth baseball card while sleeping in an abandoned old house that’s about to be knocked down the next morning. Griffin’s family is having financial problems, and he doesn’t know much about baseball cards, but an original 1920 Babe Ruth in mint condition has to be a lot of money. So they take it a collector to see if it’s worth anything and the guy (S. Wendell Palomino; nicknamed Swindle) lies that it’s just a cheap knockoff and buys it for a pittance. It turns out the card is worth $974,000. What the guy did is unethical, it’s sleazy, but there’s no way to prove he lied. Swindle is going to get away with it.

But Griffin is the Man with the Plan, and he and his team of friends come up with a plan to steal the card back. It’s a very exciting and action-packed book, and one of the best fiction books I’ve read.

So what did Gordon did to follow up that success? He wrote Zoobreak, a book that, while good, is no match for the original Swindle. In Swindle, there was a million dollar baseball card. In Zoobreak, there’s a stolen pet monkey. When Griffin and the team steal the monkey back from a crooked zoo, they can’t help but take all the other maltreated animals with them. They intend to donate them to the local zoo, but their contact is delayed is Africa, and won’t be back in two weeks, while they’ve got over forty extra animals on their hands! It is helpful to note that these books can be read in any order. While I would advise beginning with the first book, it is possible to pick up the series anywhere.

This is a trailer video made by Scholastic for Zoobreak.

Summary

Savannah Drysdale, animal expert and member of the team, can’t believe it when her pet monkey Cleopatra disappears. Her dog Luthor can’t believe it either, who Cleopatra was best friends with. She knows “Cleo” couldn’t have run away; she loved it with Savannah and Luthor!

When Griffin and Ben go looking with Luthor to find Cleopatra and come back with a banana, Savannah is sure Cleopatra has been kidnapped. This evidence is of course not accepted by the police, however, and Cleo continues to be nowhere to be seen.

To make matters worse, Ben Slovak has narcolepsy, a disease which makes him susceptible to falling asleep at any time of the day. And his condition is getting worse. His parents can’t pass it up when they have the opportunity to send him to a boarding school in New Jersey (the adventures in the Swindle series take place in Cedarville, Long Island), where he’ll be separated from not only his family, but also his best friend! Even though Griffin’s dad tries to convince him this is the best thing for Ben, Griffin knows the only reason Ben is going is because he’s a kid, and his parents want him to go.

Some more time passes, and Cleopatra is still gone. It looks like Savannah will have to continue without her monkey. But when they go on a school trip to a floating zoo, they’ve finally found their animal. And Savannah was right; she’s been kidnapped! Cleo is right there, under the name of Eleanor. Savannah is sure of it. Even Darren Vader, Griffin’s arch nemesis, respects Savannah’s knowledge of animals. But to prove that it really is Cleopatra would take money, DNA testing, and probably over a year. Even though Cleo is depressed and sad, Savannah has to leave her there.

Actually, all the animals are depressed. There are poorly fed and malnourished. The owner of a zoo goes by the name of Mr. Nastase, who is quickly nicknamed “Mr. Nasty.” Even the teacher who takes them on the trip isn’t impressed. But there’s nothing they can do about it.

At least not if you’re the Man with the Plan. That zoo stole Savannah’s monkey, and just like they took back the million dollar baseball card in Swindle, this time they’re taking back something even more valuable.

But when they get to the zoo and see all the poor animals somehow they end up taking not one monkey, but forty animals. Savannah is sure they can just give them to a animal expert at a zoo she has contact with, but it turns out she is out of town-and she won’t be back for two weeks! Two weeks with forty animals!

And not only that, but Mr. Nasty is on the case-and he’s tracked them to Cedarville! How are they going to hide forty animals from not only him, but also their parents! Surely they can’t hide for two weeks. And what happens when people discover who has the animals? Will the Man with the Plan come up with a genius plan at the last minute? And will an animal shockingly save Ben from boarding school?

Although we have come to expect interesting moral dilemmas in Gordon’s books, this may be the most interesting push of moral barriers he has written yet, while still being quite morally strong.

Review

This book is easy to speed through at 230 pages with large font, written for kids around the age of 9-14. The writing is very good, although not quite as much as good as in other books by the author. This book could almost be said to be aimed for a lesser age audience than the rest of the book for its more simplistic writing, and could be read by anyone 7 years old and up. The plot was also less complex, with somewhat less twists than in the rest of the series and some of the plot being unrealistic.

I have stated in other places that this was the worst book in the series, although it was still quite interesting. Without being the least bit preachy, it respects the rights of animals, which also leads to respecting the rights of humans. There are many unexpected events and dangerous escapes, as well as being very exciting.

Overall, I give it a 2.75/5.0 because of the interesting story and exciting plot. I would give it a 3.75, but I take off half a point for the lesser writing and another half a point for the less complexity of the plot, twists and slightly unrealistic story.

This is the worst in the series, but is still a pretty good and interesting book that fans of the series should definitely pick up, especially for younger readers. Click here to buy the book Zoobreak by Gordon Korman.

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