Title:  Raven in a Dove House
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Author:  Andrea Davis Pinkney, Liz Van Doren (Editor)
Format: Hardcover, 1st ed., 208pp. (paperback published Sept 1999)
Publisher: Harcourt Brace & Company
Pub. Date: April  1998
Edition Description: 1 ED

Recommend Age Range: 11

Synopsis
While spending the summer with Aunt Ursa and her fourteen-year-old cousin Foley, twelve-year-old Nell is happy to be in the company of her cousin and his friend Slade until they ask her to hide a pistol in her old doll house.

Review  
Every summer, 12-year-old Nell visits her Aunt Ursa in Modine, a sleepy little town in upstate New York with a large number of other African-American families. She looks forward to Aunt Ursa's divine cooking and to being with her cousin, 14-year-old Foley. However, Foley and his best buddy, Slade, desperately want to escape Modine. Slade is a slick talker whose honeyed words give shivers of delight to young Nell and old Aunt Ursa. Unfortunately, he also believes his newly acquired guns are the tickets to freedom and high living. Foley is caught in Slade's web of words and feels smothered by his well-meaning mother.

Communication is lacking-between Nell and her successful father (he is reluctant to return to Modine, she feels shut out of his life), between Foley and his mother, and ultimately between Foley and Nell. Terrified of Foley's gun hidden in her abandoned dollhouse, she is unable to warn her aunt or get counsel from her father. Tragedy is waiting just outside the dollhouse. Most of the characters are fully drawn, with the exception of Nell's father. Impatient readers may not buy his change of heart and surprise visit. Shifting moods, increasing tension, and a well-defined setting make this novel compelling and thought-provoking for readers not quite ready for Rita Williams-Garcia's seering Like Sisters on the Homefront -- Marilyn Payne Phillips, University City Public Library, Missouri (for School Library Journal)