As a media specialist, it is important that you are ready to help any student in need find a book as well as with helping them research. Giving booktalks will definitely help spark the interest in some students. Students need to see media specialists, teachers, and administrators be readers as well!
Could you just imagine sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch when you notice a photograph of a young girl on a milk carton. You take a closer look and it is a picture of you. Janie Johnson, the main character, in The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline B. Cooney stares at the empty milk carton. “That is me! I remember that dress, white with tiny dark polka dots, and the braids. That is my picture.” Confusion starts to set in Janie’s mind. She speaks, “How can it be?” Janie can barely breathe. “Inside, her mind spun. It was like having a color wheel for a brain. When it slowed down, things were separate, like primary colors: I have a mother and father…I have a childhood…I was not kidnapped…kidnapping means bad people… I don’t know any bad people…therefore I am making this up. But when her mind speeded up, the colors blended dizzily. That is me on there. I, Janie Johnson: I was kidnapped” (Cooney, p.13-14). She keeps asking herself…How can I be kidnapped? I would remember… “Jennie Spring-taken from a shopping center in New Jersey at age 3.” Janie begins with asking many questions in her mind. She decides it is up to her to find out the truth. She includes her boyfriend, Reeve, to help her uncover the truth. Nothing seems to make sense to Janie. How could her loving parents, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, kidnap her? Nothing makes any sense—something is terribly wrong. Janie begins to piece together the puzzle. If they are not Janie’s parents, then who are they? She loves them so much. What will she do? Who is Janie, and what really happened?
Audience: Sixth through eighth grade
Book #2 Whatever Happened to Janie?
Book #3 The Voice on the Radio
Book #4 What Janie Found
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I loved reading this book as a kid. It's on my list to reread as an adult. I didn't know it was a series.
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