And, while I found Chum creative and entertaining, it didn’t wow me as much as I hoped it would.

Last year, Adam Glendon Sidwell charmed me with his imaginative and superb middle-grade debut, Evertaster, so I was super excited to dive into his new middle-grade adventure, Chum. Despite a few editorial errors the writing works and I think young readers will enjoy this book. And Levi is a sympathetic character as he tries to redeem himself from an embarrassing video that was posted on the internet. I mean the combination of a contest, TV cameras, pirates, and sharks is mighty appealing. And middle graders tend to be more willing to let certain things go in pursuit of an interesting story and that definitely exists here. But if you are willing to suspend belief for a while its a light fun read. I guess it's not surprising that a thirteen-year-old would do this, but the adults!? And I guess it's not too much of a leap that Levi would accept the word of the director even though it's evident early on that the guy is not on the up and up.

I found this to be an entertaining story, I also found it difficult to accept that Levi and the other contestants would leap into something like this with so little effort to check it out. Unfortunately, it quickly becomes apparent that there is more going on that what he originally believed and fame soon becomes the last thing on his mind. Levi ends up on board the Philanthropist, a ship that houses the reality show that he believes he is a part of. Chum is a rather wacky adventure story involving a reality show, a ship, pirates, and sharks.

Adam glendon sidwell