7. A Child Called "It"

Book 7: A Child Called "It" by David Pelzer (A+)

Wow...
Just wow...
This book is the first part of a trilogy that tells the first hand account of David Pelzer's childhood where he was mentally, emotionally, and physically abused by his mother. It went on for years. According to the back cover, it was "one of the most severe child abuses cases in California history."
I have never been so distressed and horrified by what an adult human being could do to a child. Unfortunately, I was not able to finish the story and learn how David escaped because that is in part two The Lost Boy.
To read this book, you need two things: a strong stomach and a hard heart. I can't believe I didn't cry or sob hysterically. Probably because it was so surreal, so horrendous that I haven't been able to fully process it all yet. The book was so realistic in its accounts that I couldn't put it down. In fact, I read the whole thing in less than a day.
The mother in this story changed overnight and began attacking one of her boys. And there was nothing anyone in the family could do about it. David was not allowed to play or even look at his brothers. He was called horrible, vile names and told that he'd never amount to anything. He was hardly ever given food, and once, his mother starved him for ten consecutive days. She poisoned him with a mixture of clorox and ammonia. She purposefully left pork in the fridge for weeks so that when she threw it out and her son ate it from the garbage for want of food he would get food poisoning. She stuffed and smeared his baby brother's soiled diaper in his face and told him the eat its contents. The horror goes on from there...
The will of that child and how he has manged to lead a completely normal life now is unbelievable to me. It's more than an inspirational story... it's something that I can't even wrap my head around. Honestly, I have no idea what thoughts I have about this book because I am so... just so... I can't even express it. I don't know if I could survive if I had been David nor do I know how I could survive if I had been one of his brothers and had watched that happen to Kate or Anne every day. I was actually more shocked by how the father and brothers just allowed the mother to do that to their own blood than I was by what the mother was actually doing to the child.
I have no idea what else to say... just I can't believe that could happen to a child. I can't believe that can happen in our society.

I just lost another shred of my innocence.