A Child called it ~Book Review

by: Uel Ceballos

This one really got me. As I flipped through the first few pages, I couldn’t take the ripping emotion. I couldn’t imagine a child being tortured like that. However along the pages, something hits me as well – could it all be as true as it was marketed? At some point, the child must have been really abused. But abused like that at such young age, he must have been really strong at heart and mind to survive the pain. “A Child called it” is a biographical novel of Dave Pelzer about his childhood. As a child he was being abused by his emotionally unstable mother. There was even a time when he was stabbed but never brought to the hospital. I haven’t witnessed that kind of horrible event thus it made me doubt. What kind of mother was that? What kind of father, who after seeing his child stabbed just stayed calm and unaffected? Or did the child was just in his illusion of being stabbed?

Dave Pelzer wrote the book in the point of view of a child. It was effective, though some events might have gone beyond reality, only the author knew. It took a lot of courage for someone to recount the dark days of his past. Much painful was to remember every single detail; to transform it into words and write into paper. I don’t know. Perhaps Pelzer was crying while typing each word in his manuscript. “A Child Called it” was an awakening force, a reminder to everyone that in some dark basements of a house that we passed through, a child might be suffering in verbal, emotional, and physical abuse. Way back in Pelzer’s days, there wasn’t any law passed about children abuse. Issues on children’s matter are left to their parents’ concern. In this case, the things that Pelzer experienced might all be true, even the stabbing part; and there must have been other children who experienced the worst. My heart was dying just having to think of it. I couldn’t even starve my pet dog, what more a human? But the book reminded me as well that in this planet we called Earth, there were heartless creature who lived among us. Such the like of Pelzer's parents. 

“A Child called it” was a torture read but it would worth your time. It introduced you to the days that you wouldn’t want to be in; to a journey that you wouldn’t want to take. Dave Pelzer and all the others who experienced the same thing were extraordinary, strong people. God would not give them these challenges if He knew they wouldn’t make it. My heart goes out to them. God bless them.

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