A Child Called It-a-like

A CHILD CALLED "IT": AN ABUSED CHILD'S JOURNEY FROM VICTIM TO VICTOR
by David J. Pelzer
This book chronicles the unforgettable account of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games – games that left him nearly dead. He had to learn how to play his mother's games in order to survive because she no longer considered him a son, but a slave; and no longer a boy, but an "it."

PURPLE HIBISCUS
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
From the outside, fifteen-year-old Kambili has the perfect life. She lives in a beautiful house, has a caring family, and attends an exclusive school. Yet things are less than perfect in her wealthy Nigerian home. Although her papa is generous and well respected, he is fanatically religious and tyrannical at home. He looms over his family's every move, severely punishes Kambili and her older brother, Jaja, if they're not the best in their classes, and hits their mama if she disagrees with him. Home is silent and suffocating. As the country begins to fall apart under a military coup, tension within the family escalates. And shy Kambili must find the strength to keep her family together after her mother commits a desperate act.

BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA
by Dorothy Allison
At the heart of this astonishing novel is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone. Observing everything with the mercilessly keen eye of a child, Bone finds herself caught in a family triangle that will test the loyalty of her mother, Anney. Her stepfather, Daddy Glen, calls Bone "cold as death, mean as a snake, and twice as twisty," yet Anney needs Glen. At first gentle with Bone, Daddy Glen becomes steadily colder and more furious – until their final, harrowing encounter, from which there can be no turning back.

NEECEY'S LULLABY
by Cris Burks
Growing up in Chicago in the 1950s, Neecey once felt that her world was perfect. She was loved and protected by her father, Jesse, and lived in relative comfort with her mother, Ruby, her grandmother and her siblings. But when Ruby and Jesse’s marriage falls apart, the children end up living in poverty in a housing project.

Ruby plunges into depression and anger, leaving Neecey to learn on her own how to cook and care for her five younger siblings, some mere babies. Yet despite the trauma, Neecey’s love for her sisters and brother, and ultimately herself, helps her find the inner strength to succeed.

THE FIRST MAN
by Albert Camus
Camus tells the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own. Camus summons up the sights, sounds and textures of a childhood circumscribed by poverty and a father's death, yet redeemed by the austere beauty of Algeria and the boy's attachment to his nearly deaf-mute mother.

BECAUSE I AM FURNITURE
by Thalia Chaltas
The youngest of three siblings, fourteen-year-old Anke feels both relieved and neglected that her father abuses her brother and sister but ignores her, but when she catches him with one of her friends, she finally becomes angry enough to take action.

STAYING FAT FOR SARAH BYRNES
by Chris Crutcher
Eric and Sarah have been friends since junior high, when his weight and her scars made them outcasts. In high school, Eric has slimmed and Sarah doesn't let being an outsider hurt her. Now she sits silent in a hospital. Can Eric uncover her secret before it puts them both in danger?

LOCK AND KEY
by Sarah Dessen
When she is abandoned by her alcoholic mother, high school senior Ruby winds up living with Cora, the sister she has not seen for ten years, and learns about Cora's new life, what makes a family, how to allow people to help her when she needs it, and that she too has something to offer others.

NO RECK'NING MADE
by Joanne Greenberg
Raised in the poverty-stricken gulches of rural Colorado, Clara Coleman forged her dreams from the certainty of school – a place that showed her a majesty, order and gentility that had none of the empty anger she knew at home. Clara strove for this sense of stability and became a respected teacher, principal, wife and mother in Gold Flume, a mining town near, and not unlike, the place of her childhood. It was there that she would spend her life reaching out to children whose hunger for order and justice mirrored her own.

CRANK
by Ellen Hopkins
Kristina Georgia Snow is the perfect daughter, gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. But on a trip to visit her absentee father, Kristina disappears and Bree takes her place. Bree is the exact opposite of Kristina. Through a boy, Bree meets the monster: Crank. And what begins as a wild ecstatic ride turns into a struggle through hell for her mind, her soul and her life.

FIFTH BORN
by Zelda Lockhart
When Odessa Blackburn is three years old, she sees her grandmother for the last time, and so begins her story as the fifth born of eight children in a troubled family. Molested by her father, Odessa is also the sole witness to a murder he commits. Her mother guards both secrets and joins her husband in ostracizing their fifth born from the rest of her siblings. As Odessa grows, so do her troubles. She ultimately separates herself from her parents and siblings into a new reality that prompts memory and revelation. Her choices for survival provoke an outcome that will forever alter the carefully maintained lies of her childhood.

ANGELA'S ASHES
by Frank McCourt
The memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy – exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling – does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.

GOD DON’T LIKE UGLY
by Mary Monroe
Annette Goode is a shy, awkward girl who keeps a terrible secret – Mr. Boatwright, the boarder her hardworking mother has taken in, abuses her daily. Frightened and ashamed, Annette withdraws into a world of books and food. But the summer Annette turns thirteen, something incredible happens: Rhoda Nelson chooses her as a friend. Rhoda, who is everything Annette is not – gorgeous, slim and worldly – welcomes Annette into the heart of her eccentric family, which includes her handsome and dignified father; her lovely, fragile, "Muh'Dear;" her brooding, dangerous brother Jock; and her colorful white relatives. With Rhoda's help, Annette survives adolescence and blossoms into a woman. But after her beautiful best friend makes a stunning confession about a horrific childhood crime, Annette's world will never be the same.

PRIVATE PEACEFUL
by Michael Morpurgo
Fifteen-year-old Tommo Peaceful and his older brother Charlie enlist in the British army and are sent to fight in the trenches in France after their noble landlord offers them a choice between joining up or having the family evicted from their home.

CALL ME HOPE
by Gretchen Olson
In Oregon, eleven-year-old Hope begins coping with her mother's verbal abuse by devising survival strategies for herself based on a history unit about the Holocaust, and meanwhile she works toward buying a pair of purple hiking boots by helping at a second-hand shop.

THE DARKEST CHILD
by Delores Phillips
Rozelle Quinn is so fair-skinned that she can pass for white. Her ten children are mostly light, too. They constitute the only world she rules and controls. Her power over them is all she has in an otherwise cruel and uncaring universe. Rozelle favors her light-skinned kids, but Tangy Mae, 13, her darkest-complected child, is the brightest. She desperately wants to continue with her education. Her mother, however, has other plans. Rozelle wants her daughter to work cleaning houses for whites, like she does, and accompany her to the “Farmhouse,” where Rozelle earns extra money bedding men. Tangy Mae, she’s decided, is of age.

IMANI ALL MINE
by Connie Porter
The unwed mother of a baby girl narrates, in her lyrical, street-smart voice, her progress on her journey to adulthood in an increasingly violent world.

THE COLDEST WINTER EVER
by Sister Souljah
Ghetto-born, Winter is the young, wealthy daughter of a prominent Brooklyn drug-dealing family. Quick-witted, sexy and business-minded, she knows and loves the streets. But when a cold winter wind blows her life in a direction she doesn't want to go, her street smarts are put to the test of a lifetime.

THE GLASS CASTLE: A MEMOIR
by Jeannette Walls
Rex and Rose Mary and their four children lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family. When the money ran out, the Walls family retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town Rex had tried to escape.

THE RULES OF SURVIVAL
by Nancy Werlin
When Murdoch begins dating Matt’s mother, it seems as if life may become peaceful for the first time. Matt and his sisters have never before known a moment of peace in a household ruled by their unpredictable, vicious mother. And so, after Murdoch inevitably breaks up with her and the short period of family calm is over, Matt sees that he needs to take action. He refuses to let his family remain at risk. Can he call upon his hero, Murdoch? And if not, what might his desperation lead him to do?