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Cooney is a master at intertwining suspense with modern teenage issues and has mesmerized her readers with Driver's Ed (an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and a Booklist Children's Editors' Choice), Among Friends (a New York Public Library Best Books for the Teen Age), Twenty Pageants Later (an ALA Quick Pick for Young Adults), and the time travel novels Both Sides of Time and Out of Time.
Just hours before Cooney departed from her home in Connecticut for the starting point of her first international book tour, I pirated a spot in her schedule for an interview. Cooney, born in 1947, discovered her love for writing in college. Now an award-winning author, she visits schools all over the country, addressing young teens about her popular young adult novels.
Our conversation quickly turned to Janie, the heroine of the three companion books, The Face on the Milk Carton, Whatever Happened to Janie? and newly released The Voice on the Radio. Cooney is adamant in saying that she never intended for Janie's story to become a set of sequels. But many teenage readers wrote to her, complaining that she did not end the original story, The Face on the Milk Carton, with a chapter tying up all the loose ends.
"That book is about worry," Cooney explains. "And so if you do close off everything, there's nothing left to worry about. Kids need to understand that parents really do worry for years and years and years. So The Face on the Milk Carton is a story where readers have to go on worrying." Thanks to readers' letter-writing persistence, Whatever Happened to Janie? and now The Voice on the Radio soon followed.
As young readers tune in to Cooney's latest, Janie Johnson is a senior in high school and is finally beginning to feel surefooted about herself and those she loves (after the excruciating discovery that she was abducted as a child). This is also the story of Janie's boyfriend, Reeve Shields, as he begins his first semester in college where he becomes a talk show host on the campus radio station. Unbeknownst to Janie, Reeve is under unbearable pressure to attract a large number of listeners, and the only interesting subject he can think to broadcast is the personal and private story of his girlfriend, Janie Johnson. The outcome sends Janie reeling and unearths someone wicked enough to set the wheels of Janie's ghastly past in motion once again.
But heady as this newest storyline is, it still isn't enough for Cooney, who embellishes each character with true-to-life emotions and issues. How does she manage to create fictional characters so real that young adult readers demand more stories about them? By "strongly emotionally identifying with other people," says Cooney in describing her writing inspiration.
Often, that inspiration results in difficult or "taboo" issues the characters might have to address. And in those matters, Cooney is fearless, unlike many young adult writers who shy away from sensitive subjects, such as kidnapping, or teens having to make sexually responsible choices.
"I don't feel I've ever approached a taboo subject," Cooney professes. "We're talking about families and love. How do you love your parents when they have gone wrong, and how do they love you when you've gone wrong? And how do you pick out the right thing to do in a situation when there is no right thing to do? [The characters] are good people trying to do the right thing, but there doesn't appear to be a right thing."
Clearly, Cooney knows her audience well. She is a mother of three (her youngest is 21) so has had a "window" into teenagers' lives. And between speaking engagements, she plays the piano for junior high choruses in her town. Although it seems young adults change interests and fads by the moment, Cooney isnšt the least bit intimidated.
"It doesn't matter about hip and cool, because nothing has changed in what kids really care about. For example, they care intensely about Is it fair? And whether or not something is fair is just a big, big question with this age group. So whether they're using Rollerblades or not doesn't really enter into the major question you're going to deal with in any book."
So what are the chances of a fourth Janie book? "An awful lot of people are asking. I feel that I have done my very best by these two families. I love their story, and I love all of them. And in each case, I have felt at the end of each book 'That's it. The suspense is over.' I'm not saying there can't be a fourth one, but I can categorically say at this moment I can't imagine what it would be. Because the suspense is over. Right?"
It's certain Cooney's readers will disagree, because true to her style, as The Voice on the Radio fades into the night, we're left rereading the last page with a sense of urgency for the next sequel.
Dee Ann Grand is a children's book editor in Atlanta, Georgia.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.