Overview of A Child Called It Essay

The book A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer is a very strong and emotional autobiography of Dave Pelzer childhood. He wrote in this book about his struggle as a child to stay alive in a home where he was treated worse than an animal or a slave. I chose this particular book because as soon as I saw it caught my eyes and my attention, especially because of the title.

Dave was treated very brutally by his mother while living at home with his father and brothers. She would give him verbal and physical abuse instead of giving him all the love and attention a kid of his age could ever want from his only mother. She would grab him and smash his head against the mirror. Worse of all his mother wouldnt give him any food and thats when Dave started stealing the school lunches from kids and teachers. There was one incident that the principal reported to his mother of his behavior with the school lunches. His mother made purge up everything he ate and made him eat it all again and told him that if he ever ate again she would do the same thing again.

She would also make him drink ammonia from a spoon every day and lock him in the bathroom so he could breathe all that ammonia into his lungs. He wasnt able to relate to his brothers or sleep at his bedroom He would sleep at the house garage without any blanket, She would tell him that he was a trash child and she dint care about him at all. There was a time that Dave wouldnt listen to anything his mother would tell him.

So she stabbed him in the stomach he told his father and his father was so afraid of the mother he dint do anything about it. When the mother wouldnt be there the father would tuck Dave into his own bed. Sometimes his father would tell him to stay away from him because he did not want to get in trouble with Dave mother.

At the school the teachers and nurse started realizing that something very wrong was going on in this childs life but Dave did not report the truth when he was asked for the first time. He denied it to the teacher and the schools nurse as if he was scared that his mother would really kill him when he would het home. With fortune the nurse and teacher did not believe him and reported all the abuse that was dne to Dave at home.