74 pages • 2 hours read
Caroline B. CooneyThe Face on the Milk Carton
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1990A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 7-9
Chapter 7 Summary
Janie searches her mother’s study for a key to the safe deposit box at the bank. She finds the organized files reassuring but grows suspicious about a locked drawer. For the first time, Janie goes alone into her house’s attic. She sees a box of her old sweaters, another of her father’s ski boots, and a mysterious black trunk labeled with the letter “H.” Inside, Janie finds mementos belonging to a girl named Hannah. Though she initially thinks the trunk’s contents are boring, Janie is stunned when she sees the dress worn by the child in the photo on the milk carton.
Chapter 8 Summary
Upset by the dress she found in the attic, Janie refuses to eat the dinner her mother prepared and deliberately hurts her parents’ feelings. She believes she should act on what she knows about the milk carton by alerting Jennie Spring’s parents, but Janie likes her life and does not want it to change once she reveals her possible kidnapping.
Janie retreats to her room. She sorts through her clothing in search of an outfit for a school event. The thought of outfits and shopping lead her to a new memory. In it, she pouts and leaves her mother at the mall because her mother refused to buy her a new purse. The mystery woman from her previous vision buys her a sundae. When Janie’s father checks on her later that evening, she remains grumpy and refuses his attempts to cheer her.
The next morning at school, Janie is surprised to see Reeve at a breakfast for students with good grades. He tells Janie that he started working harder to improve his grades. The organizers of the breakfast force the students to sit with peers they do not already know. Janie talks with a boy named Dave and struggles to tell him basic details about her life because she feels confused about who she is. Dave flirts with Janie, but she is too disoriented to respond.
Janie rides home from school with Reeve. He tells her that girls flirted with him at the breakfast, and Janie feels jealous. She tells him about her inability to answer Dave’s questions. She nearly tells him about the milk carton but changes her mind at the last moment. Janie becomes lost in her thoughts, worried that she traded her “real family for a sundae” (78). She enters her house and immediately asks her parents about Hannah, her baby photos, and her birth certificate.
Chapter 9 Summary
Janie agonizes as she waits for her parents to respond. After a long pause, Miranda tells Janie that Hannah was their daughter. Hannah also was Janie’s mother. Miranda says that she and Frank are actually Janie’s grandparents. Janie is relieved to learn that she is still related to Miranda and Frank. She hugs them both. Miranda acknowledges that they do not have a copy of Janie’s birth certificate. Janie and her parents cry.
Janie’s parents explain that their real last name is Javensen, not Johnson. They changed their name and moved to Connecticut to hide from a Hare Krishna cult that Hannah joined. Hannah briefly left the cult and resurfaced, along with Janie. She told Miranda and Frank that Janie was her daughter. Hannah eventually returned to the Hare Krishna but left Janie behind with Frank and Miranda, who did not contact their daughter again in order to shield Janie from the cult. Janie, relieved and emotional, hugs her parents again.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
The mood of the novel darkens in these chapters, becoming heavier and less playful. Although Janie felt shaken by the discovery of her kidnapping in earlier chapters, she still enjoyed spending time with her parents and felt excited by her relationship with Reeve. In Chapters 7-9, though, Janie’s concern about her past impacts her ability to derive joy from her relationships. Similes and other comparisons help build the dark mood. Janie insults Miranda’s dinner, which is “like stabbing her mother” (69). Later, Janie’s hands feel “stiff and numb, as if she were going into rigor mortis” (78).
Even as they darken, these chapters relieve a degree of tension in the narrative when Janie confronts her parents about Hannah. By vocalizing some of her suspicions about her childhood, Janie provokes a long explanation from Miranda and Frank. That explanation temporarily changes the form of the novel. While most chapters feature a mix of narration and short sections of dialogue between characters, Chapter 9 heavily relies on large sections of dialogue. The chapter fills in backstory through exposition instead of action in the narrative.
The section also further foreshadows hiccups in Reeve and Janie’s relationship. While Reeve mentions that girls were flirting with him, and Janie is jealous, she remains preoccupied by the gravity of her possible kidnapping. She feels guilt, thinking that she may have traded a moment of pleasure—an ice cream—for her real family. Janie and Reeve’s relationship was already in the developmental stages before Janie saw the milk carton, and as he knows nothing of her discovery, he takes her distractedness personally. It’s only when Janie reaches out to her parents that she finds some relief; she’s not who she thought she was—Miranda and Frank’s daughter—but she finds solace in the fact that she is their granddaughter, and her life doesn’t have to change.
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By Caroline B. Cooney
