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David J. Pelzer
David J. Pelzer is the author of the powerful memoir A Child Called "It". His writing offers a stark look at childhood trauma and survival.
A Child Called "It"
- Pages
- 184
- Published
- 1995
- Language
- English
Synopsis
A Child Called "It" is Dave Pelzer's account of one of the most severe cases of child abuse in California's history. Once a member of a seemingly ordinary family, Dave becomes the sole target of his alcoholic mother's escalating cruelty, singled out, renamed "the Boy" and then "It," and stripped of any place in the household.
Told from the child's point of view, the memoir records the daily reality of starvation, beatings, and psychological torment, and the games his mother devised to break him, while his father looks away and the outside world fails to intervene. Against it all, Dave clings to a stubborn will to survive and a belief that someday his life will be different.
Unflinching and difficult, the book is the first volume of Pelzer's trilogy and a widely read testament to a child's endurance under unimaginable cruelty.
Genres
Frequently asked questions
Is A Child Called "It" a true story?
It is published as a memoir of Dave Pelzer's own childhood in Daly City, California, and is written as first-person non-fiction. Its accuracy has been publicly questioned. In "Dysfunction for Dollars" (The New York Times Magazine, 28 July 2002), Pat Jordan wrote that Pelzer had "exquisite recall of his abuse, but almost no recall of anything that would authenticate that abuse." Pelzer's brother Stephen has denied that the abuse took place; another brother, Richard Pelzer, corroborates much of the account in his own memoir, A Brother's Journey. Readers should know it as a contested memoir rather than a documented case history.
What order do Dave Pelzer's memoirs go in?
A Child Called "It" (1995) comes first and covers Pelzer's childhood up to his removal from the home in 1973. The Lost Boy (1997) follows him through the foster system, and A Man Named Dave (1999) covers his adult life. Each is written to stand on its own, but they read best in that order.
How graphic is A Child Called "It"?
It is a direct, sustained account of severe physical and psychological child abuse, described plainly and at length from the child's point of view — including starvation, beatings, burning, forced ingestion of household chemicals, and prolonged emotional cruelty by a parent. There is no sexual content. Readers who find depictions of child abuse, domestic violence or parental alcoholism distressing should approach it carefully; it is short, but relentless.