The Face on the Milk Carton

The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline B. Cooney
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

NB- This book is full of grammatical errors and spelling errors. Please be advised.
NB- This book is considered a banned book for reasons which I will state below.

As the 52 book challenge continues, this was my replacement for the banned book category. I remember reading this book in public school. It boggles my mind how today it is considered a banned book. The reasons for it being banned are “sexual content, challenge to authority and inappropriate for the age group”. There is mentions of sex and the insinuation that the kids did do something just not sex, therefore I challenge the sexual content allegation. The main character Janie does challenge authority but in this case I think if I were in the same situation I would too, and don't all kids challenge authority at some point. This isn't the first book that a child has disobeyed their parents or done something that the parents didn't want them to do. If anything, I would have thought that this would have been considered a banned book because it talks about child kidnapping and stolen children which is a felony offence. While I enjoyed this book as a kid, I did not enjoy it as an adult. There were so many grammatical and spelling errors that it was a challenging read. I think that the story line is very interesting and definitely held its own. A young girl drinks her milk at school and comes to the conclusion that she is the child in the picture of the child on the milk carton. She pursues this and finds out many things. I would give this book a solid 2 stars due to it's limitations and editing issues.

In case you are looking for banned books to read, here's a short list of the ones I found appealing:
The Colour Purple – Alice Walker
Bridge to Terabithia – Katherine Paterson
Sophie's Choice – William Styron
American Psycho – Bret Easton Ells (what the movie was based on, the character of Patrick Bateman)


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