Essay Networks

The book that I am reviewing is called ‘A Child Called It’ and it was written by Dave Pelzer. A friend recommended it to me because of how sad it is. ’A Child Called It’ is the first book of a trilogy.

This book is about the author, Dave Pelzer’s, survival of getting beaten around by his mum. The book starts off quite happily. The young boy is part of a nice normal family; they go on holidays and have fun. He had a life. Dave Pelzer loved his mum very much and describes her as, ‘a mum who glowed with love for her children’.

But all that changed after a few years. His relationship changed a lot with his mum. She became very horrible and started to beat him around for no reason. Dave’s Dad never laid a finger on his son. While his Dad was around the house Dave’s mum never touched him. Dave thought that his dad was the only thing that could stop him from getting hurt. He felt that his dad was his savior, but his dad had a job and he was out of the house most of the day. That meant more pain and hurt for Dave. Another place where Dave was glad to be was at school. School meant that he was away from his mum all day. He dreaded weekends and holidays. Every night he was made to stay in the basement and sit it a certain position. Dave liked to call it ‘the prisoner of war position’.

Every morning before he left for school he was made to wash, dry and put away all the breakfast dishes. He wasn’t allowed to eat any breakfast unless he had finished his tasks within a certain time. And when he did finish the only food he got was leftover cereal from his brothers. Sometimes he was starved for days. When he came home from school his mum forced him to be sick just to see if he had stolen any food from school and if there was he was severely punished. Dave Pelzer became so desperate for food that he began to steal from others in his class. Some of the things that his mum did to him were really sad to think about. Once his arm was forced on to a gas cooker hob and it was kept there for a couple of minutes. Another thing that his mum did was smash his head against a mirror. It was called ‘the mirror treatment’- she would grab me and smash my face against the mirror’.

Some other things that his mum did were terrible. The worst thing that she ever did was to stab Dave.

’if you don’t finish the dishes on time I’m going to kill you’,‘a sharp pain erupted just above my stomach’.

His mum never even took him to hospital she just said finish the dishes. Dave had to clean the wound by himself with dirty rags. Dave’s mum also made him drink a table spoon of ammonia. When he drank it he stopped breathing and became unconscious. His mum did this a few times and she didn’t care what happened.

Another extremely bad thing that happened was when he was doing his chores and he was cleaning the bathroom when his mum put a bucket of ammonia and clorex into the bathroom and closed the door with Dave still in it. First of all nothing happened but after a few minutes gas started to form and it was deadly. It started to spread through the bathroom and Dave could hardly breathe. He was crawling around the floor trying to find places where there was still oxygen like behind the toilet. He also wet a cloth in toilet water to breathe through. ‘I felt as if I were locked in a gas chamber’.

After that ordeal he was coughing up blood for over half an hour. Of all his mum’s punishments he hated the gas chamber the worst. One other thing that he thought was really bad was when he was forced to eat the contents of his baby brother’s nappy. This again was done a few times.

In the end he was taken away from his family by the police. The school had suspected what was going on at his home and called for help.

In the second book, ‘The Lost Boy’, it tells us that he is living a happier life with a foster family. In the epilogue of ‘A Boy Called It’, it tells us that he now has a family of his own, a son and a wife.

This book is very sad but there are good things about it. Since this book is non-fiction and the author is the person who went through all of this, it makes it a lot easier to describe his feelings and pain during the ordeal and his mums feelings towards Dave. At the start of everything he wasn’t happy but he kept himself sane by imagining himself as part of the family, sitting down to dinner with his mum, dad and brothers.

‘I felt warm inside. I smiled’. His feelings towards his dad was always good. He loved him because he was so nice to him.

‘I felt special when he winked at me and called me ‘Tiger’’.But his feelings changed towards his loving father after a long time. During the time when Dave got stabbed and he told his dad, all he said was, ‘This will be our little secret that you told me’ and ‘just go back into the kitchen and do the dishes’.

After he said that, Dave’s feelings changed totally towards his dad. ‘All my respect for father was gone. I felt more angry at him than I did at my mum’

Dave Pelzer has been through all the pain that is in this book and it must have been hard to go through it all again while writing this book but it must have made it easier to describe.

‘After a few minutes my throat felt like it was on fire. Within minutes it was raw’ and ‘The pain of the stab wound brought me back to reality’.

Dave Pelzer describes everything that he was doing very well. Everything from the way he sat in the ‘prisoner of war position’ to his movements in the gas chamber punishment.

‘I stretched my body, and using my foot I slid the bucket to the door’ and ‘I curled up in the opposite corner of the bathroom and covered my mouth with a rag’.

This book is the saddest book that I have ever read. I admire Dave Pelzer for surviving through the tough times and for going through it all again to tell us what can go on at home. It lets some people know that they have got it good with the family they have and that they aren’t going through what he went through. I would recommend this book to anyone apart from younger children.