Morrison honored with Coretta Scott King Award

Toni Morrison, the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities at Princeton, has been named a winner of the 2005 Coretta Scott King Award from the American Library Association.

The award, presented annually by the ALA's Ethnic Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table, honors African-American authors and illustrators of outstanding books for children and young adults. Morrison is the author of "Remember: The Journey to School Integration," published in 2004 by Houghton Mifflin. She was honored along with Kadir Nelson, illustrator of "Ellington Was Not a Street."

"Remember" is Morrison’s first historical work for young people using archival photographs to take the reader on a journey remembering "the narrow path, the open door and the wide road" to integration. The images serve as the inspiration for Morrison’s text -- a fictional account of the dialogue and emotions of the children who lived during the era of "separate but equal" schooling.

Also the recipient of major international honors, Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993. She was the first African-American winner and the first woman to win since 1938. She won the 2000 National Humanities Medal for her contributions to American cultural life and thought, the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for "Beloved" and the National Book Critics Award in 1977 for "Song of Solomon." Her other novels include "Love," "The Bluest Eye," "Sula," "Tar Baby," "Jazz" and "Paradise."