3.5 stars
A great story about how courage and love can make a person fight for a better life. ( )

A story I read quite a few years ago. A horrible story that couldn't help but move a person. The thing about these books is they also make you think and couldn't help but change the reader and their views about people and the world. What a person can do and can get through no matter what. ( )

Dave Pelzer's life story is powerful. At times, in his first book, A Boy Called It, I had to skim over the details of the abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother. I couldn't even bear to read about them; I can only imagine what it would have been like to have lived through them.

David was the second of five sons born to Stephen and Roerva Pelzer. For reasons that are only clear to her, Roerva abused and neglected David from the time he was 5 until he was removed from the home at the age of 12. This abuse was ongoing, brutal, sadistic and, worst of all, not done in secret. The other boys in the family, the father, the relatives, the neighbours and the teachers and nurse at the school Dave attended all knew that he was beaten, starved and even stabbed once. Finally the nurse and teachers called the police and David was removed and put into foster care. It is inconceivable to me that anyone could know of this kind of treatment of a young child and allow it to continue.

The second book, The Lost Boy, tells of David's years in the foster care system. I know that anything would be better than that kind of abuse but foster care was not all roses either. Due to the years of abuse Dave had low self esteem and he had trouble making friends. When he did he got involved with a hoodlum type and got sent to juvenile hall. Fortunately he ended up with a good probation officer and with a good set of foster parents.

The third book, A Man Named Dave, details how Dave became the adult he is, a man who was named one of Ten Outstanding Young Americans in 1993 and an Outstanding Young Persons of the World in 1994. He learned to become an inspirational speaker and help other children suffering from abuse. He became a father of a young boy and although his first marriage did not last he was happily married by the end of the book. Even more amazing he learned to forgive his birth parents and to rise above the harm he suffered at their hands. The advice he gives his son at the end of the book applies to all of us:
...no matter what happens to you, it doesn't give you an excuse to blame others or wallow in self-pity. Your mother, your teachers, others who love you, or even myself: we can only help you so far. It's going to be up to you to make it happen. No one's perfect. There are no sets of perfect parents; no one has a perfect life. ( )

Collective edition.

A Child Called It.

Covering the ages from four to twelve years, when Dave Pelzer lived with his natural family, this is a story as much of survival as of the terrors endured by a vulnerable small boy.

Pelzer's childhood was initially, and by comparison with what was to come, idyllic, but as his parents took to drink he became ostracised and abused by his mother. The suffering the young boy had to endure does not make for easy reading, at times his torment seems almost beyond belief, treated as a slave to his own family, made to sleep in the garage, regularly not feed, wearing the same unwashed clothes and subjected to numerous inhuman degradations and tortures at the hands of his mother. But while he survives he is understandably not unaffected, being isolated not just at home but through his behaviour also at school he is inevitably a very naive boy and the easy target for bullies.

He is eventually rescued and then enters the foster care system, which is where A Child Called It concludes. But before we get there there are some very harrowing accounts.

Dave Pelzer is able to recreate not just what he endure with vividness, but also the dialogue, his interchanges with his family, at school and with those who eventually come to his aid.

The Lost Boy

Covering Dave Pelzer's experiences from the age of twelve to eighteen, this continues directly from where A Child Called It left off. Much less harrowing than the latter, it nonetheless highlights the many problems that the youthful Pelzer encountered in this period. He understandable had difficulty adjusting to a 'normal' life, the relative freedom of his new life causing to be somewhat wild. We follow him through a series of foster parents, some of whom played a crucial role in taming him, teaching him how to be human, and setting him on a positive course for the future. Also playing an important part in this are some of the adult neighbours tat on foster home who saw something more in him and took an active interest in cultivating the young Dave.

This is again a very personal and revealing account, but is also demonstrates the vital role foster parents and others in the social care system can play in helping the young in need, and is as much a tribute to these self sacrificing people.

(This is a well written account, but I do find the consistent use in certain circumstances of the subjective pronoun in place of the objective pronoun not just irritating but more significantly distracting. Fortunately this error does not occur in the final part of the trilogy.)

A Man Named Dave

Here we follow Pelzer's story from the age of eighteen when he flies off to join the Air Force. He describes his progress in the Force, it not always going has he had dreamed, his traumatic first marriage, the birth of his much loved son and his meeting with Marsha who will become a part of his life. He continues to work hard, but life is a still a struggle at times.

Dave is very much his own man now, although when it comes to matters of the heart he is still learning. But when he decides in what direction he wants his life to go he is determined to make it, and it is this theme of his determination to be positive and move forward that dominates this account. It is in danger of becoming a little overbearing at times, a little too self-congratulatory, even self-indulgent, and I did find myself rushing through some of these passages just picking out a few sentences; but I also recognise there are some who will no doubt find reassurance in such passages.

My Story is a remarkable achievement, a remarkable a achievement for a young boy who made it from such desperate beginnings, and a remarkable achievement in its overall positive depiction of what could have been a morbid account. That is not to say there are not episodes of horror almost beyond belief, but whatever Pelzer has endured he is able to use it to make him what he is today. ( )

i cant belive this book. its so sad!!!!!! its about a guy named it his real name is really david. his mom staffed his in the stomache with he also had a chence for a new life but he ran back home i would run away. its my favorite book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!