A Child Called It

A Child Called “It” is a true story based on one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is a twisted, brutal, and emotional book about the childhood of the author Dave Pelzer and his alcoholic mother who played many sick games on him as a child. It is about his struggles everyday to live and go on and try to beat his mother in her games.
Until he is one day taken away by the Daly City Police Department and put in custody of the San Mateo Juvenile Department. His mother, Catherine Pelzer, started out as the perfect mother. Loving, caring, fun, nice, and she and her husband, Stephen, took Dave and his siblings on many trips to different places in California and all around the United States. Until one day things changed in the Pelzer household, Catherine and Stephen began arguing.
The arguing caused Catherine to take all of her pent up aggression out on Dave, which is when the abuse started. She first began the abuse by burning him on a gas stove and then the abuse got much worse and she began playing “games” on him and not feeding him until his chores were done in a certain time.

If they were not done in the allotted time, he was not fed that day. His father first began trying to help Dave, by sneaking him food whenever he was home from work and trying to convince Dave that things would get better in the Pelzer household. Until one day, he was caught. When Stephen was caught, arguing broke out and the “games” played on Stephen became a lot worse and more brutal than ever before.
Stephen Pelzer began not coming home after work but would instead drink all night at bars and stay at hotels to avoid the arguing with his wife. Dave Pelzer,the protagonist, first began scared that the beatings and the “games” would never stop. He began to tell himself that he couldn’t give up and that he had to try his mother at her own “games” and try to survive everyday or his mother would end up killing him.
But as time went on and he was beginning to be fed less and less, he decided to come up with different plans to feed himself everyday. So he came up with the plan that everyday he was going to get to school extra early and steal food out of the other children’s lunchboxes. Then one day children began complaining that they had food missing and then then the principal decided that Dave was stealing the food.
So the principal called his mother, and the beatings gotten severely worse. Another plan he came up with is that during his lunch hour, he was going to go the grocery store and steal food during the hour. But this plan did not last long when he was caught by the manager, and he called the school and he was then reported to his mother and the beating got even worse.
In the end, the nurse saw all the wounds that his mother had inflicted on him and the nurse and the principal talked about it. They then decided that they would report his wounds to the police department. The San Mateo Juvenile Department then took custody of Dave and he was removed from the household. His mother was never arrested but Dave was moved into foster care and he was never abused again.