A Child Called "It"

CB: Realistic Fiction

This is a book about a young child who suffers from abuse from his mother with a father who is complacent and careless. He is faced with many obstacles between abuse, neglect, and family violence. This is a great book for troubled students to read on how to get out of an abusive life style. ( )

This book will cry...it is not for the faint of heart - or stomach for that matter. However, it is the first of a series from Dave Pelzer that stays with you always. Pelzer's journey through a terrifying upbringing is brave, unrelenting, and sobering. It makes one feel grateful for every kindness in life. ( )

Child abuse and fighting is “A Child Called It,” by Dave Pelzer. Abuse, scars, bruises, starvation; all things Dave had to go through as a kid. He was not cared for. Every day he would walk into school covering the scars deep into his skin. When teachers caught the cuts and bruises, Dave was sent to the nurse, the principle and had to have the police come. He was scared to get his mother in trouble with the cops because he knew that as soon as she got ahold of him there would be nothing but hitting, smacking, cutting, kicking, and starving. Dave got the scraps of food from the others in his family. He was beat almost every day.
This book was probably the saddest book I have ever read. Nothing but violence actually left my crying in parts. The story is heart breaking. You read it and all you do is feel bad. I wondered what it would be like to be beaten and cut and starved and this book influenced me to think about how lucky I am. I always thing I have the hardest life but this is something that really made me realize my life is easy and happy. Though the story left me crying, it really inspired me to think about how lucky I am. Lucky to have a family who cares about me and will never hurt o beat me. Parents who take care of me and food put on the table every night. I have it lucky and this story is one reason why I realized that.

A Child Called It is the autobiographical account of one child's horrific experience at the hands of his alcoholic, and I would venture to say sociopath, mother. I do not know how it is possible that he survived the physical abuse, and the emotional battery and marginalization are beyond anything I've read. Equally as haunting for me were the weak-willed alcoholic father who lived complacently in the house as his son was tortured, and the amoral "mind your own business" 1970s society which, by its silence, condoned the unacceptable. Eventually, Dave was removed from his mother, but she went unpunished, and retained custody of four other young sons.

There is a great deal of controversy about the “non-fiction” genre applied to Pelzer’s work. Far be it from me to question whether a child has been abused, but A Child Called It is certainly sensational. It is also very poorly written – little more than a lengthy list of tortures. Is it exaggerated and sensationalized for entrepreneurial purposes? Only Pelzer can answer that.

Pelzer writes about his later life in two sequential novels: [The Lost Boy] and [A Man Called Dave]. I do not intend, at this point, to read on. ( )

The choice of the 'non-fiction' shelf for this is, I hear, questionable. But it's marketed as such, so there you go. It reads like a laundry list of tortures, some probably exaggerated, or unrelated events stuck together for dramatic effect. ( )