A Child Called It
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A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive is David J. Pelzer's 1995 autobiographical account of his maltreatment as a child by his alcoholic mother, Catherine Roerva, who singled him out from among her other children as an object of abuse.
He was variously starved, stabbed, forced to eat feces, and burned over an open flame, and was invariably referred to as "an It" rather than by name. He was ultimately saved from his family situation by a schoolteacher.
A 1997 sequel, The Lost Boy, details Pelzer's experience in the foster care system.
The paperback book's ISBN 1558743669.
Criticisms or questions about Pelzer's works have been raised in articles in the Mail on Sunday ("Is He Making 'It' All Up?"), the New York Times Magazine ("Dysfunction for Dollars"), and the online magazine Slate ("Dave Pelzer - The Child Abuse Entrepreneur (http://slate.msn.com/id/90532/)"). [1] (http://www.bookbrowse.com/index.cfm?page=author&authorID=145&view=Interview)