Cherry Hill resident Susanne Munn and Amy Towers of Haddonfield have known each other for the last 13 years and were previously co-workers at an agency in Princeton where Munn worked as a writer and Towers a designer.
It was there that Munn shared with Towers a poem she’d written for her son. The result was the idea for their first book, “The Great Shape Debate.”
“When Susanne told me about the poem, immediately I just started picturing everything, and how I thought these different shapes (in the book) had so much personality and they kind of came to life for me visually,” Towers recalled. “And I really just wanted to do justice to this beautiful story that Susanne created.
“And so we both really worked together, collaborating on what we felt the shapes represented and how we wanted to portray them, and they just really came to life.”
The book began with Munn creating her poem in a Word document – in one sitting. The poem itself has undergone minimal changes while being adapted into a book, but the visuals have changed drastically over the years.
Towers and Munn experimented with fonts, colors and faces for their book, all of which have undergone multiple revisions. The book was put on hold several times, but the two were determined to publish. The book be released on June 3.
“It’s been labor of love for the past decade between the two of us, and we just never lost sight of the passion we had,” Munn recounted. “Not only for the book – and obviously it’s an expression of creativity and ourselves – but it’s about the message we can share with the world.”
The story follows a group of six shapes who all share how they wish they were someone else, but ends with a message about self-acceptance and individuality.
“I think it was Theadore Roosevelt who said, ‘Comparison is the thief of joy,’ and especially in today’s world, in this age of digital and social media, constant comparison is rampant, and self-doubt and questioning who we are or what we are is pervasive,” Munn observed.
“It’s too easy to get lost in other’s attributes while we fail to recognize our own,” she added. “At the end of the day, we all have value, we all have purpose and some of the most important ones that we can have can stand for ourselves.”
