Module 9: The Face on the Milk Carton

Book Summary:

A teenager named Janie is having lunch in the school cafeteria with her friends when she notices her childhood picture on a milk carton. Privately freaking out, she thinks of her loving parents and wonders if it is possible that she could have been kidnapped long ago. She keeps the startling discovery to herself and, at home, sneaks into the attic where she finds more clues suggesting she really is a missing child.

At the same time that all this is going on Janie is also starting a relationship with her older neighbor, Reeve, and trying to maintain a normal relationship with her circle of friends. However she is falling apart on the inside. When she finally confronts her parents they inform her that she is actually their granddaughter, the daughter of their estranged daughter.

Janie is relieved for a little while but continues to feel uneasy. She convinces her boyfriend to drive up to New Jersey where her supposed real family lives. She doesn’t approach them but sees them from the car and realizes they all look like her.

Janie finally confesses to her parents where she has been and why she has been acting so troubled lately. Her parents realize that their estranged daughter must have been the one who kidnapped Janie. She made up the story of Janie being her daughter, but her parents believed her and raised Janie all this time as their own. Finally Janie’s mother calls Janie’s biological mother and… the book ends! You have to keep reading Cooney’s books about Janie to hopefully get to a conclusion.

APA Reference:

Cooney, C. B. (1990). The face on the milk carton. New York, NY: Delacorte Press.

Impressions:

This was a quick and easy read! There was not a lot of depth to the characters, but that is common in mystery as the author must focus on the plot. This would be a good book for a teen reader who is reluctant to read, for whatever reasons, because the mystery compels the reader to want to finish while the plot predictability is accessible for the struggling reader. Also, the author wrote several books about the main character, Janie, so it is kind of like a series, which are also good for reluctant or struggling readers.

Professional Review:

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, 1990)
In a novel that never quite lives up to its gripping premise, a high-school student discovers that her much-loved parents may in fact be her kidnappers. After Jane Johnson sees what seems to be her own face as a three-year-old displayed on a school lunch carton, she is plunged into a series of flashbacks: memories of long-forgotten childhood experiences that reinforce her sudden suspicion that she may have been kidnapped. As the underpinnings of her secure world slip, she clings to Reeve, the boy next door, with whom she is falling in love. Her parents' explanation (they are her grandparents; her mother abandoned Jane to return to a cult) proves unsatisfactory, pushing Jane toward emotional collapse until--with the help of Reeve and his sister--she finds a way to face the situation rationally. Cooney's original plot and satisfying resolution are marred by Jane's interminably overwrought analysis of her condition, and by a love interest that is more tacked on than intrinsic. Nevertheless, a real page-turner. 1990, Bantam, $13.95. © 1990 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.
(PUBLISHER: Bantam $13.95., PUBLISHED: 1990)

Library Uses:

The librarian could read aloud a section from this book (to get the readers hooked!) and then do science experiments on solving mysteries, detective science, such as finger printing, ink chromatography and CSI kits!