David Pelzer's The Lost Boy

Critic of Pelzer Book- The Lost Boy
The Lost Boy, a novel by David Pelzer, is the sequel to A Child Called It. As a young boy David is forced to bounce back and forth between five different foster homes. His only possessions were literally the torn and tattered clothes that were on his back. David's life has been a long, harsh and a cruel reality. David grew up in a home with an alcoholic, abusive and unloving mother, a father who refused to deal with his own sons' mistreatment, and brothers who saw David as the household maid. It wasn't until the love of a teacher that David finally escaped the physical and emotional abuse of his own mother. However, David's search for love and happiness was far from over. Everyday that he was in foster care
Foster care is no walk in the park. It is a sad and unstable lifestyle for, and David was a prime example of the effects foster care has on a child. Throughout the whole novel, I was always hoping that David would finally find a home and family that loved him. It was hard to picture David bouncing back and forth between five foster homes and still battling with his mother interfering in his life. Throughout the novel I was hoping that David would find some happiness in his life. It was even sad to see that he had a hard time making friends and even just taking pride within himself. He was such a confused and emotional wrecked little boy. It really made me feel sad to know that this was an actually true-life story of such a young boy and the fact that he remembered all the horrible things that he went through in life was unbearable. In the end, however, David does triumph not in finding a loving family to live with, but he triumphed within himself. He never lost hope and he never gave up and after several years of waiting he finally heard those three words he yearned to hear…"I love
Not only must foster children cope with the emotional consequences of such instability, they also must adjust to new teachers, classmates, curricula and rules. In addition, school disruptions often result in lost credits, delayed academic progress, repetition of grades, and delays in enrollment and transfer of student records.
Most of the 500,000 children in foster care have been through the physical and emotional trauma, such as prenatal exposure to alcohol, tobacco and other drugs; parental abuse, neglect and abandonment; exposure to violence in their homes and communities; separation from their birth families; and frequent changes in foster placement. These experiences place children at great risk of developing physical, emotional and behavioral disorders that interfere with