A Child Called It

“A Child Called It” By Dave Pelzer is about his real-life story on how he faced more abuse then ever imagined starting at a young age. Dave’s mother was an alcoholic and acted out towards Dave. She would refer to him as “it” and caused emotional and physical pain on him for years. For some reason his mother treated Dave less then a human, but at the same token took care of the rest of the family. At one point Dave’s mother forced him to drink ammonia, and starved him until he ate his own brother’s feces.

Like any other child Dave wanted nothing more than to be nurtured by his mother, but she always made him feel unworthy of himself. As you can imagine, Dave was very distance from the rest of the family because he was being abused while the rest of them were treated basically normal. I am sure you wonder where his father was when all this was going on. Well, his father was a firefighter and was often away at work. Dave was scared out of his mind to speak out and because of this he wouldn’t tell his father what was going on. At the same time his father was scared to speak to Dave’s mother on the way Dave was acting. He knew what was going on, but seemed to put his blinders on because of fear also.

After years of abuse Dave’s teacher finally realized what was going on because of the way he acted in class. Dave was taken away from his family and put into different foster homes throughout the years. This abuse was one of the worst case abuses in California history. This book is a great book for all ages. Even though Dave’s journey is torturing and intimidating at the same time it teaches readers lessons about life.