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Whatever Happened to Janie?

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"Whatever Happened to Janie" re-introduces the reader to 15 year old Janie Johnson whose life as the privileged, only child of a well-to-do Connecticut couple was shattered in the book "The Face on the Milk Carton." She discovered that the Johnson's were not her real parents, and that she had been kidnapped from her real family by the Johnson's real daughter, Hannah. Janie learned about why the Johnson's raised her as their daughter, and she learned about her real family, the Springs.

For twelve years the Springs of New Jersey have agonized over the loss of their middle daughter, Jennie. Her disappearance and the uncertainties of her fate have cast a pall on what is otherwise a large, boisterous family. Then after twelves years of worry, Jennie was found- alive and very well. The Springs demand that she come home to her real family.

Janie/Jennie is a total stranger to her real family. How can she adjust to this completly alien enviroment? How can she call Mr. and Mrs. Spring Mom and Dad, when she does not even know them? How can she relate to an older brother and sister who resent that she actually lived better than they did when they had feared her abused, dead, or worse at the hands of her kidnapper? How can she live without her life-long friends and her boyfriend Reeve? But she knows deep-down that she really is Jennie Spring and not Janie Johnson. In the end she must make the choice between the parents who gave birth to her and never gave up the hope of finding her, and the parents who raised her. There is no right choice here because innocent people will be hurt no matter what the decision. A poignant story, deeply reminiscent of Conrad Ricther's classic novel "The Light in the Forest," "Whatever Happened to Janie" makes for stirring reading. It's not perfect, some plotlines are not followed through, some characters underdeveloped, and the character of Reeve is a thumping bore, but it is still an outstanding story on difficult choices.

Whatever Happened To Janie? is the exciting sequel to 'The Face on The Milk Carton. Janie Johnson now lives in New Jersey with her real family, leaving behind Frank and Miranda Johnson, whom Janie still considers her real mom and dad. Janie is having a very hard time living with the Springs.

The Springs are a very nice and caring family. The mother and father who are ever-so-rightly overprotective of the other Spring children: Stephen, Jodie, and the twins, Brendan and Brian. They keep trying to pull Janie

back into their mold. However, so far Janie is resisting. The Springs keep calling Janie by her birth name, Jennie, and the people Janie sees every day now at school calll her Jennie Spring instead of Janie Johnson. Janie is very torn because she feels like she is two different people. Janie herself has called her other half the bad half. She usually acts as the 'bad twin' when she is with Mr. and Mrs. Spring and her siblings. Janie Johnson is the bad person inside of her that she can't let go. Janie's older brother Stephen especially hates Jennie. He blames Jennie for ruining their lives. They had to live in the same house for twelve years because her dad would never accept a promotion, because of his daughters kidnaping.

Jodie wishes that Jennie would act like a real sister instead of acting like a prisoner in their home. Jodie doesn't understand why Jennie keeps running away from them ... Jennie acts like they would strike at her or yell at her all of the time. Jodie loves her family and town, and thinks they're really neat. However, Jodie realizes that Jennie had a completely different upbringing than she did. Frank and Miranda Johnson showered Jennie with not only love, but also lots of money, clothes, and whatever Jennie wanted. Jennie is so confused about her relationships with the Springs and the Johnsons. Then Jennie realizes something that terrifies her. She doesn't have enough love to go around for both of the families. Will the Springs and the Johnsons be able to work things out and keep Jennie in both of their worlds? Or will Janie Johnson be stuck with two names for the rest of her life?

Book Report Whatever happened to Janie? By Caroline B.Cooney

Is Janie Johnson actually Jannie Spring? That is the question the main character is trying to answer in the novel called Whatever happened to Janie by Caroline B.Cooney. The theme of this book is kidnapping of young children and everything their family goes through even after they are found, if they are found at all. This book is a sequel of the famous book Face on the milk carton. The whole story starts in Connecticut, where Janie Johnson lived ever since she knew she existed. Everything became different when she found out she actually was not who she thought she was whole her life. She found out she was kidnapped by real daughter of her fake parents, Hannah, when she was three years ago. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, her fake parents, never knew that because when Hannah brought Janie to their house, she told them Janie was her daughter and she asked them to take care of her because Hannah was involved in some kind of cult organization. Nobody knew why Hannah kidnapped Janie. Janie also found out that her real parents lived in New Jersey and that they've been hoping she would come back ever since she was three, when she got kidnapped. She also found out that her real name was not Janie, but Jannie. That is a brief summary of what happened in the first book, Face on the Milk Carton. The book I read, Whatever happened to Janie, talks more about Janie's, or Jannie's, life after she found her real parents. When she found out about the whole story, Janie decided to call her real family, so she dialed the number she saw on the milk carton, where her real family put her picture, and she talked to her real mom. Her mom, or Mrs. Spring, told her they have been waiting for her ever since she disappeared and she told her to come home as soon as she could. Janie did want to meet her real family, but she never thought about living with them and leaving her mommy and daddy. She knew she had to go, she was a minor and her real parents were the ones who deserved to have her and that's exactly what they wanted. Janie was very, very sad. She had a perfect life. She had the best parents she could possibly want, she had the best friends, she was popular, and she had a boyfriend whom she loved more than anything else. Her real family was very eager to meet her. They spent twelve years in fear. Since Jannie was kidnapped they never let any of their other children out of sight. They had four more children, Jodie and Stephen, who were around fifteen, same as Jennie, and two other twins, who were younger. Stephen and Jodie were the ones who suffered the most because of this fear. They were never aloud to go anywhere without their parents and their friends never understood that. That is why they, especially Stephen, have always hated Jennie. Now, when Jennie was coming, even though her kidnapping caused a lot of troubles to the family, Jodie still wanted to have a sister. She imagined them talking about many things, things she could never talk about with Stephen. The day when Jennie came, everybody was a little nervous, but as the days went by Jennie's attitude stayed the same. She missed her parents from Connecticut, and she always thought of them as her real parents. She never talked to any of her new family members, she never called Mr. and Mrs. Spring Mom and Dad, and on rear occasions when she talked, she always talked about her old parents. Her real family was very hurt, but they thought that time would help her get used to living with them. Unfortunately, that never happened. One morning when she woke up, she told Mrs. Spring she wanted to go back to her parents. Mrs. Spring knew that moment would come, and she knew she could do nothing about it. Janie spent her whole life with another family and she could never adjust to a totally new way of living, without anything and anyone she used to know. Mrs. Spring said yes and Janie went back to Connecticut. Johnson family was so glad to see her and from the day she left until that day they struggled as much as Spring family did. Even though they could do nothing about Janie's decision, Jodie and Stephen knew who did this to both, Spring and Johnson family. They knew it was Hannah, who kidnapped Janie twelve years ago. They wanted to get her. Even though nobody knew where she really was, they knew she was arrested for prostitution two years ago in New York. They knew she was still there because she was too poor to travel to anywhere else. They decided to go to New York. After they made their plan and actually went to New York, they found Hannah. It was clear to them, now, why police never arrested Hannah. They saw that with the kind of life she had, she had already paid the price for making two families struggle. She was a pauper. Janie stayed with Johnson family and she also wrote to her real, or may be not, mother, Mrs. Spring. She invited Jodie to Connecticut and Jodie knew she was going to go. Janie knew Springs were her real parents and she never forgot that, but she also knew that living with Johnson family, where everything she loved was, was right. This is one of the best books I have ever read. It is a real "page turner". You cannot stop reading it till you find out what happens at the end. If I had to rate the book in scale from one to ten, I would give it an eight because the book is very fun to read, but sometimes hard to follow. The first thing I like about this book is that you can never know what is going to happen next and that makes you want to read the whole book at ones. For example, one chapter finishes when Janie asks her mom if she can go back to Johnson family. That makes you want to read the next chapter and see what happens. This novel is very easy to read and the fact that it is very exciting and thrill makes it even easier to read. The other thing I like about it is the way author describes the characters' feelings. When she describes how the character feels you can actually feel that and imagine exactly how it feels. For example, this is a paragraph that describes how Janie spent the nights with her new family:

"She needs books. Since Jodie could sleep with the lights on, Janie would read into the night, keeping nightmares at bay. Her dreams were of falling. The cliff she clung to crumbled and everything around her was bottomless. Dark and slippery with the grime of evil. She would wake up drenched with sweat in the tight little bedroom only a few feet separating her from the new sister whom she could not enjoy, and who definitely did not enjoy her." From this paragraph you could feel and imagine how hard Janie's nights were and her nights were also illustrating her life with her new family. The author also used a lot of simile and metaphor to describe the mood of the story better and clearer. This book makes you think a lot. It is very hard to imagine a person in as hard situation as Janie is in. Even though I did not like some things Janie did, I know that if I were in a similar situation, I would do something similar. The theme of this book and the conflict it deals with make it special. The kinds of conflict that can be found in this book are person vs. person and person vs. him/herself. When Janie tries to make herself love her new family and she actually does not want to become one of them, that is when she has a conflict with herself. When her sister and brother get mad at her for not trying to adjust to a new way of living, person vs. person conflict appears. Ever since I started reading this book I thought that all of these conflicts were gonna disappear and the story was gonna have a happy end. On my surprise, the end was not happy at all. That is one thing I did not expect from this book. In this novel author uses 3rd person point of view and sometimes, when she wants to emphasize something she uses 1st person point of view. Sometimes the book is hard to follow because the author changes the point of view. First, she describes the situation from one character's point of view and then the next paragraph describes how another character sees that whole situation. One thing I do not like about this book is that it is necessary to read the first book The face on the milk carton in order to understand the story better. I think that author should have explained the plot and the setting of the story better. Instead, the main thing the author focuses on is the mood of the story, characters and their feelings. I also like the books that leave us with some unanswered questions, and in this novel we never got to know why Hannah kidnapped Janie. After reading this book I am left with a whole new aspect of looking at the cases of kidnapping. Now, I know that even if a kidnapped person is found after many years, the problems are still there and it takes a lot of time and effort to get over them. In this novel, Caroline B.Cooney describes the problem better than anybody else and gives us the point of view of every single person that struggles because of the problem. This story can teach us a lot more about our own families, friends, and even the general meaning of life.

I read the first book in this series, "The Face on the Milk Carton," because year after year, I would see it on the summer reading list for a local school. Curiosity got the better of me and I bought it. I was so engrossed in the story that I just had to read the sequel (and this book is for young people whereas I'm an adult!!). Anyway, an impoprtant issue is raised; what happens when birth parents want custody of a child who has been raised by other parents?

Here, Janie Johnson had discovered she was actually Jennie Springer and, as a teenager, she was now living with the Springers in New Jersey after having been raised for nearly 12 years by the Johnsons in Connecticut. She knows the Johnsons as her parents but she turns out to be the long lost daughter of the Springers (she had been kidnapped). A teenager's reality and sense of who she is is suddenly changed. Her birth parents and siblings are unquestionably good people but Jennie's identity and sense of reality is as Janie, the daughter of Frank and Miranda Johnson. The Springers were victims, their daughter was kidnapped. Now they want their daughter back. However, doing what is right for the Springers is traumatic for their daughter. Meanwhile, the Johnsons are being hurt too since they were not culpable in the kidnapping. On the one hand, the Springer family wants to have a relationship with their daughter and sister. On the other hand, the Johnsons are losing the teenager they have come to know as their daughter.

This story is actually somewhat topical because every now and then, there is a story in the news about someone who is being raised by one set of parents getting involved in a custody battle with another set. In such a case, someone is bound to get hurt. Seeing this difficult situation from the eyes of the child makes for a riveting story. She is put into the position of having to form relationships with strangers who are actually her closest family. They are wonderful people but from a different economic background and with different values. She is suddenly in a strange new school as she leaves her closest friends behind. I recommend this book and I intend to read the additional sequels (there are two more).

This book was very sad. It's about a 15 year old girl named Janie Johnson or is it Jennie Spring? She finds out that at age three she was kidknapped. She decides to go live with her biological parents Mr. and Mrs. Spring in New Jersey. Her real family which includes an older brother, Stephen, an older sister, Jodie, and twin younger brothers, Brian and Brendan, are excited but Janie or Jennie is relunctant. When she arives everyone is warm wnd friendly but Janie is cold and she misses the family that raised her. When everything is said and done Janie makes a decision that will change both families lives.

After reading "The Face on the Milk Carton", many wonder what happened after the phone call that ended the book. "Whatever Happened to Janie?" picks up where that story ended.

At times, "Whatever Happened to Janie?" is a remarkably sad read as it sees the main character torn between two families. Now living with her biological family, Janie/Jennie finds herself struggling with her identiity as she begins life with the Spring family. Not wanting to let go of her past life, she finds conflict with the siblings that are adjusting to her while failing to form a bond with her new parents. Janie/Jennie must decide who she wants to be and live her life within those limits.

Just as the previous book ends with a cliffhanger, this one does also. A slightly less provocative ending finds the Springs seeking revenge on the trail of Janie's kidnapper Hannah. While some may want to continue to the next book in the series to resolve this subplot, purists may have already decided the first book was enough. And as good as the first book was, they may be right.

Janie Johnson has just lived through a nightmare. She discovered that she was kidnapped as a child, and now she is back with her birth family, the Springs. They had moved on with their lives, but Janie's (whose real name is Jennie) disappearance cast a shadow over everything. Now Janie has been put back with the Springs. She is traumatized by her findings, and is having a horrible time trying to fit in. Her siblings are angry at how their lives were dramatically changed, and shocked that their sister, who they thought was dead, is back. Her parents are tender but cry at any moment. Janie wants to go back to her old family and old life. Her siblings want revenge. Will Janie be able to fit in, or will she hurt her family once again by returning to the people they think kidnapped her?

This Book is an awesome sequal to the first book, THE FACE ON THE MILK CARTON, and can not be gone without. The book contains some content that may not be appropriat for someone younger than 7th grade (I am 13). I thorughly enjoyed this book because I love suspense stories like those oh Cooney and M.H. Clark. I can not see how anybody who has read the first book can go without this book. Right now I am reading THE VOICE ON THE RADIO and will continue on to WHAT JANIE FOUND when I finish it.

This is a story about a little girl who was going by the name of Janie. She was living a life of lies. At age three she was kidnapped by a girl named Hannah. Hannah then took her to her parents and told them that she could not take care of her. So Hannnah's parents took care of her. As she got older she was realizing who and what her real life was like when she finds out she was kidnapped. She went back to her real mother and father, but didn't like what all was going on there with three other kids in the house. She felt misplaced in that family. She would think of her self Jennie Spring or Janie Robertson? She could not figure out who to be. You will have to read this amazing book "Whatever Happened To Janie" to figure the rest of this great book.

"Whatever Happened to Janie?" begins with Jodie Spring (Janie Johnson's biological sister) getting ready for Janie's arrival. At first, I thought the story was going to be told from Jodie's point of view, and I was on the verge of setting this book aside. I didn't think Jodie would be the best choice for a protagonist; I wanted Janie back. But by the second chapter, I realized the book would be alternating between the other characters in the book, not just one. This is definitely a change from "The Face on the Milk Carton" where it was only Janie telling the story, and I think this way is much more effective; now everybody can voice their opinion, even if they don't verbalize it to each other.

Once Janie arrives at the Spring's home, she immediately feels homesick. She can't get used to calling the Springs her family, or responding to her birth name: Jennie Spring. Everything they do, how they live, etc.--all of it's alien to her. And she certainly doesn't hold back her feelings, even if it hurts them. It's almost as though Janie wants to hurt them, to make them pay for separating her from her parents.

Obviously, there's a lot of resentment between Janie and her two siblings, Stephen and Jodie. From the start, Stephen isn't very accepting, and with his temper, it doesn't look like Janie and he will ever be friends. Jodie, on the other hand, wanted another sister. After all, she was the only girl among three other brothers (Stephen and the twins, Brendan and Brian). But Janie's resistance ruins Jodie's hope of having the perfect relationship with her sister.

I don't think one person is left unscarred in this book. If it's not from the transition of a new family member, it's the reopening of old wounds by the FBI who want to find Janie's kidnapper, Hannah Javensen.

Despite Janie's harsh decision in the end, I thought it was the right one, although it hurt the Springs tremendously. The whole ordeal was well-written, and if you like true-to-life events, then I highly recommend the Janie series: "The Face on the Milk Carton", "Whatever Happened to Janie?", "The Voice on the Radio", and "What Janie Found".