Book Review (1)

Title : A Child Called 'It'
Author : Dave Pelzer

Summary
Dave Pelzer was brutally beaten, bullied and starved by his emotionally unstable mother as a child. An alcohilc mother, who played tortuous, unpredictable games almost left one of her son nearly dead. She no longer considered him a son, but a slave ; no longer a boy, but an 'it'. His bed was an old army cot in the basement, his clothes were torn and smelly and he even wore those to school. When he was allowed the luxury of food, it was scraps from the dogs' bowl.

The outside world knew nothing of the nightmare behind the closed doors as Dave did not dare to say anything about he being tortured. Dave dreamed of finding a family to love him and call him their son. It took years of struggle, deprivation and despair to find his dream and make something of himself in the world.

Reflection
Basically, I think that it is really a cruel thing for the mother to torture her biological son till this extent. He is also a human, like her. Can't she spare a little thought for him? Imagine you were being locked in a toilet and ammonia gas was being released into that enclosed room and what's worse, you have to breathe in the gas. How would you have felt? This was what Dave Pelzer had gone through during his early years of life when other people in his age were enjoying their childhood years. Not only this, his mother also made him vomit out what he had eaten previously; burnt his hand over the stove; locked him in the toilet and ask him to lie down in a tub of water, face down; stabbed him in the stomach although it was not intentional; gave him no food for one whole week; etc. It it happened to any one of us, I think that we would rather die than to suffer such torture.

It gave me a realy sad feeling when reasding this book. Dave Pelzer's life was like being controlled by his mother, his father's life too. Dave admired his father a lot, but his father was not able to help me when Dave was being tortured as he was always being threatened by his wife. When reading this book, I really hated the mother a lot as Dave is his son. How could she treat him so brutally? Don't it even hurts her? And sadly, I only managed to borrow the first book and thus, I've not read finish the whole series yet.


KaiXin