Biographabulous

Pelzer, Dave. A Child Called "It." Deerfield Beach: 

Health Communication Inc.,1995. Print.

"A Child Called 'It'" by Dave Pelzer is not only one of the most heartbreaking accounts of child abuse chronicled, it is also one of the most important. Pelzer horrifies the reader with non-stop brutalizing and demoralizing descriptions of the hell his life was everyday at the hands of his sadistic alcoholic mother. Vivid and almost objective descriptions of being burned over a stove, starved, beaten and forced to drink ammonia give the reader a lurid vision of what his daily life was like when he was a child. Many would have cracked under such horrific abuse, but the redeeming silver lining of this story is that Pelzer decided to survive - to live his life in spite of how hard his mother tried to take it away.

This book is a fierce beam of light meant to shoot into the darkness that is child abuse; it calls attention to the warning signs for adults who have kids in their lives, and offers the strong voice of hope and survival to those who suffer alone at the hands of a caregiver. Frightening as well as inspiring.




Abstract (thanks to OCLC World Cat): "[This book] is [an] account of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played torturous, unpredictable games - games that left him nearly dead. He had to learn how to play his mother's games in order to survive because she no longer considered him a son, but a slave; and no longer a boy, but an "it." -Back cover."

OCLC World Cat Record ~ Holdings, Abstracts, Additional Info