Finding Carter vs. Other Found After Kidnapping Stories

[Aliasscape]

So the second I heard about this it reminded me of a young adult book I read as a kid, well a series of them actually. It was actually my favorite book as a teen and I still reread it sometimes.

The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline B. Cooney (1990).  Quick summary, teenager Janie recognizes her own face on a milk carton, calls the number and discovers she was kidnapped as a child and has to wonder about the parents who were raising her.

 

Later books in the series were:

Whatever Happened to Janie - Janie is sent back to live with her birth family and parents, including a sister, Jodie, twin brothers, and an older brother, but has a very difficult time adjusting back and misses the parents that raised her.

 

The Voice on the Radio -- Janie's boyfriend Reeve decides to tell her story on his radio show. (Not my favorite book, mostly just rehash of the first two.

What Janie Found -- A little better than Voice on the radio but I honestly don't remember the details of that one very well at the moment. What Janie learned about her kidnapper.

Janie Face to Face-- I haven't read and only because of googling the series again because of Finding Carter did I find out that this book was written last year, a good 13 years after the previous one. 

 

Anyway, Finding Carter sounds most like Whatever Happened to Janie. With the exception that it sounds like Carter's mother was the actual kidnapper, while Janie was taken by someone else.

 

The Face and Milk Carton and Whatever Happened to Janie were adapted into a made for TV movie starring Kellie Martin in 1995, easily found online to watch.

 

Another similar book I read is called Twice Taken by Susan Beth Pfeffer which was about a noncustodial parent kidnapping and a girl sees herself in a call in TV show about missing kids and calls to learn that her father took her illegally and is sent back to live with her biological mother. Again with the huge adjustment that it is.

 

There's also, The Deep End of the Ocean (both a book and a movie) but I recall  it was much more depressing as told from the bio parents POV mainly. 

 

I'm going to be very interested how they develop this as a series vs. a book or a movie though. Especially as a teen drama where I feel like they'll be tempted to downplay the seriousness of the situation they're creating.

Edited July 8, 2014 by Aliasscape

[fliptopbox]

I was just thinking about that Face on the Milk Carton series. This show reminds me of that sooooo much. I wouldn't be surprised if it comes out that the book series was the inspiration for the show. Anyway, I'm curious to see how similar it ends up being.

[meatball77]

For the life of me I can't remember the name of the show, but there's a British series about a woman who is sure that a girl she sees in a train station is her missing child that I watched a year or two ago on Netflix.  It's far more like this one than The Face in the Milk Carton because the girl acts out and runs away. 

[Nena]

I kept thinking about the other end of the spectrum - I Know My First Name is Steven.  True story, made into a mini-series in 1989, then later a book.  That one's a little more traumatic, because he was taken and abused, not just taken to be a family.  I do think it gives a perspective to how horrible Carter is made to be in this one - he was someone who intentionally escaped and wanted to go home, and he had a miserable time adapting.  This is someone who doesn't want to go and had no idea it could ever happen, so doesn't even have an incentive to adapt.

[Pop Tart]

I only read the first couple Janie books and it was a long time ago, but I watch the movie with Kellie Martin when I'm flipping around the dial and find it on tv. One question I've always wondered about the movie.

 

In the movie she was taken by a young woman who was very troubled and ended up being raised by that young woman's parents who think she is their granddaughter. She finds out who she is, spends time with her birth family (with far more grace then Carter is showing so far) and then is allowed to return to her "parents" because of how unhappy she is living in her birth family's home. Her biological mother (played by Sipowicz's wife, can't remember actress's name) brings her back to her adoptive (for lack of a better word) parents. And just as she's handing over Janie's suitcase she notices the "mother's" bracelet. She stares at it intently for a moment and it sure seems like it means something to her. But the movie ends and it's never explained.

 

So I've always tried to figure it out. Did she have a memory of the kidnapping and remember seeing the bracelet? Did the adoptive mom have more to do with Janie's disappearance then she's let on? Is there anything in the books about this?

[aradia22]

I remember having watched the movie version of The Face on the Milk Carton but I have no memories of the movie. I've definitely seen kidnapping plotlines as elements of shows before, but never the main focus. A British series called The Syndicate features a character who has kidnapped a child (though it's a little more complicated than that). No spoilers. I swear it's also been featured on a police procedural. Maybe Cold Case. In the episode I think a babysitter stole the child she was watching. 

[Aliasscape]

Oh actually you remind me, as far as a police procedural that Rachel Nichols (now on Continuum) starred on a Fox show Called "The Inside" and her character on that had been taken for a couple years a child and uses that experience to help solve crimes for the FBI.

 

 

So I've always tried to figure it out. Did she have a memory of the kidnapping and remember seeing the bracelet? Did the adoptive mom have more to do with Janie's disappearance then she's let on? Is there anything in the books about this?

 

The end of that movie focuses a moment on the two mothers final handshake as the last scene, trying to show the union between them. So it may focus on the arms but there is nothing significant about any bracelet in the movie (nor the books that I recall.) 

[karenc3]

I always liked the Kellie Martin Face on the Milk Carton movie.   I think that it had a better buildup to Janie finding her family, it happened more gradually.  There was  a realization that she looked like the biological family when she went to see them and they were all redheads like her.   Though, this was also because the story was she had seen her face on the milk carton, and figured out that she might be their daughter.  Still, it was more obvious that Janie was reconnecting with her biological family which made it more believable to me.

[KaveDweller]

I think the main character in Face on the Mike Carton was more sympathetic because she wasn't just upset about having to go back to her real family, she was upset at the idea that her "parents" could have taken her from someone else and lied to her for her whole life.  She still ultimately chose to live with them, but she didn't just defend them without asking questions.  And it turned out they didn't realize she was taken.  If they had, I think she would have been angrier.  But Carter doesn't seem to have any questions for her mom, which is really just weird if you ask me.

.

[karenc3]

But Carter doesn't seem to have any questions for her mom, which is really just weird if you ask me.

.

 

She might have questions, but there hasn't been time in the story for her to really talk to Lori.   She seems to still think of Lori as her mother, maybe she is in some kind of denial about what has happened. Even when she did talk to Lori, she wanted to protect her. 

 

And the Face on the Milk Carton, I think the parents that raised Janie though they were her biological grandparents, because their daughter was the kidnapper, but told them Janie was her biological child. I don't remember now if Janie thought they were her parents, so it is still not the whole truth, or if she knew all along that she was believed to be their granddaughter.  Anyway, I don't think Janie was upset because the grandparents took her away from her biological parents, since as far as they were concerned, they were raising their grandchild.

Edited July 14, 2014 by karenc3

[Aliasscape]

Janie believed they were her parents, period. When she starts unraveling this mystery, they explain how they're her grandparents and they just figured she was their daughter Hannah's kid. So they knew they were lying to her about being her parents, but they had no idea they weren't actually related to her in any way.

[In2You]

So far Carter is annoying. It actually reminds me a little bit of the Carlina White case and how the movie portrayed her. 

Edited July 15, 2014 by In2You

[Spencer Hastings]

The author of the Janie series recently revived the series to write a conclusion.  If anyone is interested in reading the book, I'll put this in spoiler tags. 

Because of what happened in previous books in the series (it turns out her "adoptive dad" knew where the kidnapper was), Janie is much closer to her biological family and eventually goes back to being called Jennie because of the connotation and hurt surrounded by Janie.

  When Carter asked to be called Carter, I thought of that book.  It's very possible that as she grows and bonds with her family, she'll want the same.  That is if Carter stops being a brat.

[bettername2come]

Actually this show reminds me a little of Switched at Birth, despite that show not actually being about a kidnapping. However, one of the moms has known the daughters were switched since they were three, and I think both girls reacted more realistically to finding out about it than Carter has to being kidnapped. Both series also have Meredith Baxter as the grandmother, so there's an added connection.