RJ #12

Dear Mrs. Zrihen,

I currently finished A CHILD CALLED IT by: Dave Pelzer. This was an extremely sad and scary book. Every time something traumatizing happened I wanted to throw the book in a river, but another part of me could not put it down. The worst thing that happened to him in my opinion was the “gas chamber” with a bucket of Clorox and Ammonia. The reason I think this was horrible was because Ammonia puts holes in your brain and Clorox messes up your lungs so to be stuck in a bathroom with a bucket of the stuff, in a good way it’s SO hard to believe that after all he went through, he survived.

This book is about a boy, David Pelzer who had a “good” life so to speak (because ages 0-5 isn’t much of a life) with a loving mom, a strong father, and two great brothers, what more could a kid in the seventies ask for? Well, everything was peachy keen until for no apparent reason one day his mother decided to get drunk and have her kids search for something she so called “lost”. She made them do this every day for a couple of months while father was at work until she told only Dave to search. After that, things went awry. She started beating him, starving him, forcing him to lie for her. Some of the things she did to him were the “gas chamber”, starving him, punching him in the face for talking, making him eat his own vomit if he wanted to eat so bad, forcing him to eat poop (but he refused), making him ware the same ragged shirt & pants every day,and shoving soap down his throat. However, that is not even half the things she would to “punish” him for being a “bad boy” (even when he did not do anything wrong). One thing that she claimed he was being a “bad boy” was when she get this: PLAYING ON THE GRASS. So for a punishment she made him strip naked (of course no one was home) while she put his hand over the stovetop! First, you do not punish a kid for doing nothing wrong like playing in the grass! Second, he was not even playing in the grass! Moreover, if things were not bad enough with him and his mom his own brothers were beginning to disown him! He was now the family slave. He did not even get a bed to sleep on anymore, but an army coat in the basement. One week she had been threating to kill him and taking a knife to scare him (even though he actually wanted her to kill him) but, became dizzy and actually stabbed him in the stomach it was an accident. (Not that she should had even had a knife in her hand). And to get food he would steal food from the kids at school, but he always got caught which meant beatings at “home”. Once, a child welfare agent was coming in two days to interview Dave to see if he were being abused so, that meant his mom tricked him into thinking she was going to stop her ways so he would lie to the agent. Plus, he was bullied at school. The book ended with his father leaving a.k.a a living hell for him. The first chapter of the book took place as a prologue, which was when the school nurse told the principle, and the police came to tell his mom that they were taking him away from her.

I used six strategies while reading, two before, two during, and two after.

The two before are:

1) Plan how much I was going to read.

2)  Asked people who read the book what they thought of it.

Two during are:

1)       After each chapter, I decided whether the title of each chapter made a lot of sense. (They all did).

2)       I would think about how I felt about every chapter. (I felt horrible after mostly everyone).

Two after:

1)       I thought about the main idea of the book.

2)       I discussed it with my mom.

The people (their not necessarily characters) in this book are: Dave, Mom, Dad, Stan, Richard, Kevin, and Ron. (Most important highlighted and underlined, second most important just underlined.)

The genre of this book is Memoir. The sub-genre of this book is Self-help, Psychology and Inspiration. P.O.O. is age sequence. The P.O.V. is 1^st person. The figurative langue is similes and metaphors. I recommend this book to people that have been abused to be inspired and to people that do not appreciate what they have.

I would rate this book 10/10 because the story was amazing, I mean just to know he survived is HUGE.

                       Sincerely,

Shianne Salazar J