A Child Called It: One Child's Courage to Survive

this book is brutal, mesmerizing, and heart wrenching all at once. i read this in three sessions across my sunday afternoon and lord. that hurt

Heartbreaking book, but gives a good perspective. Quick read

I don't know if I like the book or not. It is interesting and keeps your attention, so it is good. BUT, it's a story about terrible abuse of a child and it's TRUE. So, it's not good. I am glad that he wrote the book because people need to know that these things do happen to children, and maybe knowing what a real person went through and what it might look like to an outsider could help a child to be saved from these situations.
It is a book that will do much more than tug at your emotions. It will make you angry and sad. It will make you question humanity. It will make you wonder how in the world this could happen and continue to happen.

Sophomore

A hard book to read. Horrific story. It did a good job of telling the story but I wanted to know WHY. Why was this boy treated so terribly when his brothers were not. I'm moving onto the second book so I'm hoping for some of those answers.

This book broke my heart and put it back together in a matter of 5 hours. I read the entire book in one day; I couldn't put it down. Dave's story puts you in the mind of a child suffering severe domestic abuse. His perspective gave me a new view of the world, and gratefulness for my life. From this book, you feel hope, heartbreak, pain, and celebration. You feel an overwhelming amount of sympathy and admiration for the determination of a little boy in an impossible situation. This story will forever stick in my mind as proof that in any situation, a little hope and determination can get you through.

4/5
Incredible insight to David's childhood of extreme child abuse. This book is an extremely difficult read because of the content, but it is something important for people to read in order to get just a glimpse into the life of an abused child.

Update: This book has stuck with me a while since reading it. Because of this, I gave it an extra star. I often find myself throughout my day, dwelling on the horrific events that occurred in this book. This book is not for the weak, that's for sure, but I do suggest reading it to understand what abuse could look like & understand what some children go though. If you do read it, I promise you will never forget it.

I have put off reading this book for years. I just knew that it would be a book that just completely guts you and leaves you heartbroken. I wasn't wrong.

This is a story about David, a little boy who endured the worst kind of abuse throughout his childhood at the hands of his mother. She starved him, beat him, burned him, made him drink chemicals, tried to make him eat literal shit...this bitch was majorly fucked up. He was 1 of 5 children and while his other brothers were treated like kings, he was, in the words of this book, treated as the family slave.

This was a very short book that I read within just a couple of hours. To say that I enjoyed it would be a lie, but it did open my eyes to how bad abuse can be. I do wish that he would have included more of the story. It left me with a few unanswered questions. I want to know why his mother turned on him so quickly and violently. I believe that she may have some sort of mental disability that worsened with her alcoholism. In the beginning, she seemed like the best mother that any child could want, why did she single him out and hate him so much? Since I very much intend on reading the next book, hopefully my questions will be answered.

After doing a bit of research on the author, I realized that this book has gotten a lot of hate. I see that some people believe that he lied about his childhood, or exaggerated the truth. Well, I refuse to be a part of that. In a certain part of this story, his mother called him an It. (Hence the name of the book.) She didn't even see her son as a human being, just a worthless thing. So, forgive me but I WILL NOT take his story away from him. If I did, I would be a part of the problem. Even if he did fabricate some of the story, at least it brought child abuse into a new light. So many people live their day to day lives not knowing how fucking horrible someone else's life has been. Or, they think that child abuse is just a child being beaten, when in reality it can get so much worse.

I recommend this book not because it's good, it's a truly heartbreaking story. But, I recommend this book because I feel that everyone should know what can happen behind closed doors and some of the signs to look for with an abused child.

Not terribly well-written, which took away from the experience. Despite Pelzer's disclaimer that the book was written from a young perspective, I've read other books with young narrators which were much more engaging. Pelzer's torture was unimaginable and nauseating at times, which was also somewhat difficult to endure. However, I am still interested in his story and may read the other books in the trilogy.

I've just read two different articles about Pelzer's work, and now my take is: I am glad I read this book, and I enjoyed it, but I'm not going to read the rest of them. Certain quotes disturbed me:

But there is a creepier reason for Pelzermania. He has turned child abuse into entertainment. Pelzer likes to be known as the guy who “makes child abuse fun.” He repeatedly refers to himself as “Robin Williams in glasses.” His public appearances are manic and joking, filled with imitations of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Clinton. He craves a career in stand-up comedy. (If Schadenfreude is joy at others' sorrow, what is joy at your own?)

Pelzer frequently purchases his own books for his signings at a discount and then sells them at list price. It is not clear whether these sales alone keep his books on the best-seller lists. The big bookselling chains like Barnes & Noble and Borders, as well as huge stores like Wal-Mart and online sellers like Amazon, refuse to release specific sales numbers. So if they sell 10,000 copies of ‘‘A Child Called ‘It''' in a week, there is no way to know whether that was made up of bulk sales or the combined individual sales from all their stores. Still, those 10,000 books would be tallied for best-seller purposes.

A really sad sorry. Not the best written book, but gets the point across that the author experienced horrid abuse.