A Child Called It

[Kirsten]

"A Child Called It" is probably one of the saddest books that I have read. This nonfiction story was told from the point of view of Dave Pelzer. Dave Pelzer grew up in California in a family of six. He had a mom, dad, and three brothers. He says that he remembers when everyone in the family was happy. They would go camping and have fun together as a family.

Dave Pelzer's childhood was reported as "one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history." His life went from playing all day with a loving family to complete misery everyday. He went from sleeping in a nice warm bed to sleeping on a tiny cot in the dark cold basement. His mother made him do all the work in the house and abused him in as many creative ways that she could come up with. At one point she made him drink cleaning chemicals.

This books was written well and drew you into the book. At some points I wanted to stop reading it but I couldn't put the book down. There were a couple parts that I thought were unnessesary. There was a lot of crude language in the book and I didn't think he needed to put in the all of the stuff that he thought about his mother.

Overall it was an interesting book.

[Am]

I hate it when people say this is a made up story, I agree it is not wonderfully written but how can anyone say he is lying??? My father used to beat the hell out of me in the presence of my mother and siblings and THEY ALL DENY it happened. My mother won't admit because she doesnt want to be asked where the hell she was at the time and my two siblings like to pretend that it was all happy families. Believe me although my experience is nowhere near as bad millions of other children it still occurred and it still felt bad and as an adult I still have difficulties dealing with it. I learned kick boxing to stop my father from hitting me unlike David I stopped being scared in my mid-teens and started giving as good as I got. I am a parent of two adult children with one grandchild, my kids never said I beat them BECAUSE it never HAPPENED, if it did believe me they'd say so. How dare any of you say this man is lying? You all should be thankful you never experience verbal or physical abuse thats all I can say and I hope nobody related to you ever does either be a shame if they had to come to you for help.

[Zahara]

In my English class a few other students and I created a blog on the next two books in the series. If you`re interested, please check it out! I would appreciate any feedback.

http://291888.blogspot.com/