Janie

The Janie Johnson series is a four book series by Carolyn B. Cooney about a young girl named Janie Johnson who sees her own face on a milk carton and realizes that the people who raised her are not her real parents. In fact, she was stolen from her birth family (the Springs) in early childhood and the Springs want her back. The series follows the young Janie in her attempts to figure out the truth about her origins and decide who she wants to be from now on. Will she remain Janie Johnson, living with the family that is not truly hers, or become Jennie Spring and finally bring peace to the family that birthed her? The first book in the series was made into a Made for TV Movie in 1995.

The series consists of the following titles:

• The Face On The Milk Carton (1990)
• Whatever Happened to Janie (1993)
• The Voice On The Radio (1996)
• What Janie Found (2000)

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Tropes used in Janie include:

• All Men Are Perverts: Reeve continually tries to imagine ways to convince Janie, who is not ready for sex, to change her mind.
• Black Sheep: Janie or Jennie when she rejoins the Spring family in Whatever Happened to Janie.
• Changeling Fantasy: an unusual subversion; Janie has a serious crisis of identity when she discovers her real parents.
• Creepy Child: Young Hannah.
• Early Installment Weirdness: Hannah's backstory started off as an impressionable 16-year girl suffering from white guilt who needed parental permission to join a cult. Later on, it was apparently a college student who felt isolated and far from home. Similarly, her motives for kidnapping Janie seem to change from 'cult mission' to 'loneliness' to 'batshit insane' according to the whims of the author.
• Face on a Milk Carton: Janie finds her own picture on the milk carton. This is how the story begins.
• Fiery Redhead: Janie, also her sister, Jodie and their brother.
• Make-Out Point: nicknamed "Sexual Overlook."
• Overprotective Dad: Justified trope. The Springs are overprotective because their daughter were stolen when she was little.
• Raised by Grandparents: The parents who raise Janie reveal that they are not her parents, but her grandparents, and that her real mother is their daughter, Hannah. This turns out to be a lie that Hannah told them to make them accept the "replacement daughter" she stole for them.
• Religion of Evil: The cult Hannah joins.
• Technology Marches On: At least half of the first book could be resolved if Janie could have just Googled herself.
• Smithical Marriage: subverted when Janie goes to a hotel with Reeve.