Paperspine Blog

The first time I read The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline B. Cooney, I was in the seventh grade. I read it in one day, mostly before school and during lunch. I remember because I kept getting annoyed by the table – we had those crappy old-style cafeteria tables with the little blue stools that were actually attached to the table and I wanted a little more room to stretch. I also remember being late for my English class because I was reading this book. I was excused because of WHY I was late. I’d never read a book with this premise before and I was completely absorbed by it.

This book is about a teenager named Janie Johnson. One day at school, Janie drinks her best friend’s milk (even though she has a milk allergy – everybody knows that if you have a peanut butter sandwich, you have to have milk with it). Then, she recognizes the picture of the missing little girl on the side of the milk carton. Janie knows that girl. Actually, Janie IS that girl. She tells her friend "It’s me on there," and they promptly laugh at her… "Oh, she’s just trying to get out of reading her essay."

Janie, convinced it really IS her, carries the picture around with her. Suddenly, she’s now wondering how she didn’t know that her parents actually kidnapped her – this is something she honestly can’t see. But, digging into the facts, it looks more and more like that’s the case: she finds the dress from the milk carton picture up in the attic. She can’t find her birth certificate. And there are no baby pictures of her… only pictures from the age she is on the milk carton and older. But while she is looking in the attic, she also finds a box marked "Hannah". Who is Hannah? And what does she have to do with Janie? Confronting her parents, Janie finds out that Hannah was her parents’ daughter. Hannah joined a cult and, although her parents tried to rescue her, she was gone for a long time. One day, she showed up, with Janie in tow. When Hannah left again, but without Janie, they decided to keep Janie. Fearful that the cult would come after her, the Javensens changed their names to the Johnsons and moved, severing all contact with Hannah.

Janie is relieved, but then thinks on it more: this doesn’t sound completely right. She starts to remember bits and pieces of her childhood, including what seems to be family members who look like her. She even has her boyfriend drive her down to the address she has found for the Springs. There, she sees the family she was kidnapped from – in her heart, she now knows it is true. And the resemblance is undeniable. Janie struggles to make sense of all of this.

What will Janie do with this information? Will she try to get in contact with the family she barely even knows? And what is the truth, really?

Whatever Happened to Janie? is the next book in the series. This deals with the aftermath of Janie’s  decision. Her birth family, the Springs, of course want them to come live with them. She’s supposed to have no contact with the Johnsons (or even her boyfriend, Reeve) for three months. When she arrives at the Spring home, she is overwhelmed. This boisterous family is completely different from the people she considered to be her REAL family. Janie (now called Jennie Spring) is resentful towards her "new" family for wanting her back, for not wanting her to be Janie Johnson. And she feels guilty whenever she begins to have a good time with the Springs, feeling that she is hurting her "real parents".

But this is also the Springs’s story. How do the parents cope with the situation? What about her brothers? And how does all of this affect her sister, Jodie, whose room Janie now shares?

How can Janie be loyal to the family she knows and loves while living with the Springs? Will she ever be able to really become Jennie Spring? And will anybody involved ever be happy again?