2012 Beverly Higashida Komoda

         Beverly Higashida Komoda is a recognized author and illustrator of children's books and also a proficient quilter. At State High, she designed the “Little Lion Leo” logo for the ‘57 Maroon and Gray yearbook.

         She attended Chouinard Art Institute (later, California Institute of the Arts) as an Animated Film Arts major, where she met her future husband, Kiyoaki Komoda.

        After working for several producers of animated television shows in California, she moved to Long Island to be near the Manhattan book publishers.

        Her literary career includes ten books – six as illustrator and four as author/illustrator – published by Macmillan, Parents Magazine Press, and Harper/Collins. In 1978, her book, Simon's Soup, was chosen as a Junior Literary Guild selection, and in 2012 Jellybeans for Breakfast, illustrated by her in 1968, had its own place in Facebook.

        She was one of 12 YWCA women who created a Princeton bicentennial quilt in 1976, now owned by the New Jersey State Museum. She singly created Liberty's Centennial, a 6'×6' hand-sewn quilt depicting the Statue of Liberty, later purchased and hung by the NY-NJ Port Authority.

        In 1985, she created and donated one section of the 18"-wide by 1-mile-long Peace Ribbon, which encircled the Pentagon during the 40th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

        She has volunteered with Meals on Wheels, children's book talks and demos, and as a 4th grade reading fluency monitor in East Windsor, NJ.

        Her retirement has been devoted to her husband, her grandchildren, reading, writing, painting, collages, films, working on picture book ideas, and enjoying the artistic products of her adult sons.