Face on the Milk Carton (Cooney)

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Face on the Milk Carton:

1. How would you describe Janie Johnson and her life...before she sees her face on the milk carton? What does she like about her life? What would she like to change?

2. How does Janie begin to piece together the clues that will tell her the story of her life? What about her memories—her daydreams or flashbacks—what do they reveal? Do you have memories of your earliest life?

3. Janie's friends begin to notice her changed behavior. Why won't Janie tell her friends, especially Sarah Charlotte, her best friend, what she has uncovered?

4. What about Reeve—is he a good guy? Do you like him as a character?

5. How would it feel to wonder whether your parents were really your parents? If it turned out that your parents were not your biological parents, would that change your feelings toward them? What would you want to know about your birth parents? Who would be your "real" parents—in other words, what is a "parent"?

6. This book is about identity, discovering the truth about who one is. What determines identity? What would it be like to find out you aren't who you thought you were? If you have lived your life as one person and then uncover a past you didn't know about, are you still the same person? In other words, what makes you who you are?

7. Should Janie have asked the Johnsons at the beginning about the milk carton? When she finally does confront them, what is their reaction? Was it right that they had never told her about her past?

8. What does Janie realize by the end of the story? Is there a lesson she learns?

9. Do you find Janie's story compelling. Is the book suspenseful—does it keep you turning the pages to find out what happens next? What about the ending? Does it satisfy... or leave you hanging?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
  
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