58 pages 1 hour read

Dave Pelzer

A Child Called It: One Child’s Courage to Survive

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1995

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Pre-Reading Context

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Abuse, which the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines as “to use or treat so as to injure or damage,” is often associated with physical abuse. However, other types of abuse, including emotional and psychological, are also damaging to an individual. Furthermore, all of these types of abuse often overlap, and they can harm an individual’s development immensely. Using the links provided, consider the following questions: What is child maltreatment? What are some of the causes and consequences? How is child abuse determined globally?

Teaching Suggestion: Students will use their reading comprehension skills to identify relevant statistical information. The World Health Organization Fact Sheet is a comprehensive document on the subject, so students will also use their summarization skills to identify only the main points in their responses.

  • This definition on different meanings of the term “abuse” is used above.
  • This fact sheet from the World Health Organization provides information on global child maltreatment.

2. After World War II, the concept of The Ideal Family was usually based on a nuclear family structure of a stable, two-parent household and children.