David James Pelzer (born December 29, 1960)[1] is an American author of several autobiographical and self-help books.

[3] The book brought Pelzer fame, and has also been a source of controversy, with accusations of several events being fabricated coming from both family members and journalists.

Pelzer's books describe the abuse he suffered for several years of his childhood, including continual mistreatment and beatings by his mother, whom he said thought of it as a game.

He mentioned that his father was not active in resolving or stopping the conflicts between Pelzer and his alcoholic mother.

Richard Pelzer said in the afterword of his book that his objective for his story was to show how a parent can become abusive and how the human spirit can triumph and survive.

His second book, The Lost Boy: A Foster Child's Search for the Love of a Family was published shortly after in 1997.

The third book in his series, A Man Named Dave: A Story of Triumph and Forgiveness[13] was about Pelzer's experiences as an adult and how he forgave his father.

In a 2001 news article, Orion UK Publishing's Trevor Dolby said, "We get 10 letters a day from people saying the first book mirrors their own childhood, which is very depressing.

According to the American Library Association, A Child Called "It" has been frequently banned and challenged in the United States.

[23]In 2002, Pat Jordan wrote a disputed article in The New York Times Magazine that questioned the reliability of Pelzer's recollections.

[2] Due to the criticism from The New York Times Magazine article, Pelzer does not give interviews often.

[24] In a review for The Guardian, Geraldine Bedell notes that gaps in the background narrative "makes the foreground harder to trust", but believes that "substantially, [Pelzer]'s telling the truth ...

[19] More than any concern about the veracity of all the minutiae in the novel, she was bothered by the trend of authors even writing about their abusive childhoods, grouping Pelzer with Andrea Ashworth, Jennifer Lauck, Martin Amis and Tony Thornton as authors who she feels are merely profiting from their abuse by writing in an entertaining style – though she does mention examples of "national and local agencies working with sexual-abuse survivors" appreciating the honest portrayal of what happens in these situations.