Society making preconceived ideas about young adults may actually cause them to act in such a way, a “self-fulfilling prophecy”. However by doing this it may become possible that “negative expectations for particular adolescents based on such stereotypes exacerbate or even create problems that might not otherwise exist” (Buchanan). These are stereotypes that adults set often times because they are afraid of young people and do not know how to handle them. Cooney does a great job of “portraying responsible middle-class teenagers trying to come to terms with very real concerns.” (Castleton) The Face on the Milk Carton is a great read for all young readers and adults alike, yet has been challenged and banned many times.Īdolescence is characterized by most adults as a time of lax decision making and testing the limits. Janie drives herself to find her real family while also trying to maintain her own relationships with her friends, her family, and her best friend and boyfriend, Reeve. Janie plays it all out for readers and shows how difficult the process of realization is when you are no longer part of just one family, a situation that is common to many young readers whether from adoption or divorce.

Every young adult can remember the times when they were younger and wanted to run away from home, some may still be in a stage where they think about what it would be like to have been adopted, while still others live in the reality of having multiple sets of parents and families. This tantalizing novel was written in 1990 but still has adolescents today being pulled in by its’ pages. She recognizes her face on the back of a milk carton as a kidnapped victim and spends the remainder of the novel trying to place her real history and who she really is. The book follows a young girl named Janie Johnson as she learns that the people she has called mom and dad all her life are not really her parents. The Face on the Milk Carton is a young adolescent fiction novel written by Caroline B.

While we may not see faces on milk cartons anymore we all have seen the pictures and fliers for missing children all over the news, newspapers and of course grocery stores such as Wal-Mart.

Face on the milk carton series in order