The Face on the Milk Carton Review Book

Credits

Readability Historic period Range

12 and upwards

Publisher

Ember, an imprint of Random House Children's Books

Awards

Colorado Blue Bandbox Book Award, 1996; Pacific Northwest Library Clan Young Readers Selection Award, 1993; Iowa Teen Volume Award, 1993

Year Published

1991

Book Review

Plot Summary

15-year-old Janie Johnson has a happy life, good friends and loving parents. During school lunch one twenty-four hours, she sees a picture of a missing girl on a milk carton. She realizes that she is the kid that was abducted 12 years earlier. Though she adores her parents and doesn't want to upend her comfortable life, she's no longer sure she tin trust the people she believed were her mom and dad. She shares her hugger-mugger with Reeve, the neighbor with whom she's developing a romance. Reeve is mainly interested in having sex with Janie and maintaining a stable relationship between their two families. He urges her not to rock the boat by trying to discover her biological parents.

When Janie can no longer stand the suspense, she confronts her parents. They admit that Janie is their granddaughter. Their daughter, Hannah, became deeply involved in a Hare Krishna cult and left home. Hannah returned one day with a child, saying she wanted to escape. But the cult'due south hold on her was too stiff, and Hannah eventually left home again, lonely. Hannah'due south parents raised Janie equally if she were their own. They inverse their last name and, frequently, their location so cult members wouldn't find and try to take Janie.

Janie isn't certain her parents' story adds upwardly. She makes Reeve bulldoze her to New Bailiwick of jersey in an try to locate the people she believes are her family of origin. She doesn't talk to anyone there, simply she sees children who wait like her and is convinced they're her siblings. She continues to research her kidnapping and comes to believe that perhaps Hannah, not the parents she loves, really kidnapped her. Reeve asks his lawyer sister to go involved. She talks to Janie's parents, revealing Hannah's possible role in the kidnapping. They concur that Janie needs to contact her biological parents. As the book ends, Janie telephones the New Jersey family unit.

Christian Behavior

Mom and Dad say Hannah idea a lot nigh right and wrong. They say they could take imagined her being a nun and spending her life contemplating God and His means. They follow upward by saying they weren't a religious family, and then Hannah may non have known what a nun was. They tried a traditional church in an try to get Hannah out of the cult, merely Hannah nonetheless left to join the temple district. A prayer comes to Janie'due south memory, and she wonders why she, from a nonreligious household, knows a prayer. Janie is shocked when her mother admits to daily praying for Hannah's condom. She says she's surprised that Mom believes in God. Mom replies that she has no beliefs, just hopes.

Other Belief Systems

Hannah joins the Hare Krishna cult, which controls her thoughts and behaviors. There is a brief description near the cult.

Authorization Roles

Janie'south parents fight but always meet in the middle. They go to smashing lengths to protect Janie, and they support and befriend neighbor kids, such as Reeve. Mom does various types of volunteer work. Reeve's mom expresses her thwarting with Reeve and his academic performance.

Profanity & Violence

The Lord'southward name is used in vain one time.

Sexual Content

Janie says the town'due south scenic overlook is meliorate known to teens as the sexual overlook because you can get there to watch couples in action. Janie looks at herself naked in the mirror and likes her body. When Reeve first kisses Janie, she says it felt like a romance novel in which the man was so frantic with passion that he pulled the woman off of a horse or out of a carriage and onto the bed. When Jamie feeds Reeve cake, his lips and tongue touch her fingers with every bite. She flirts with another boy, wondering if flirting volition crusade one affair to pb to another. Her friend urges her on, saying the guy is not asking Janie to sleep with him or anything.

When Reeve and Janie leave town to look for Janie's biological family, Reeve says their parents will figure they went off to take sex. He says his sis went off to a hotel with one of her early boyfriends. Reeve doesn't understand why Janie isn't more interested in sex activity. He says she's like a difficult, sharp-pointed thing. When Reeve and Janie stop at a hotel, Janie says she doesn't call up she can concentrate enough to take sex activity. Reeve suggests he could concentrate enough for both of them. He reserves a room for them, but Janie decides she can't go through with it. She tells him it won't be like this when they do information technology for existent. Before returning dwelling, they have an intense total-body kiss. Janie says if people observe out near her kidnapping, she'll garner lots of publicity, like to people on talk shows with trans-bi-cross sexual habits. Reeve says he'd settle for any sexual habits at all. While Janie is visibly upset most her circumstances, Reeve kisses her and feels her up.

Discussion Topics

Additional Comments

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