Title and author
Title
I Am Human Too: A girl's search to understand the connection between her mother’s mental health and the homeless community
Author
Sarah Murphree
Photo of the author
Author biography
Sarah Murphree is a mental health speaker and the founder of Funny People Cry Too, a show devoted to ending mental health stigmas. As the daughter of a mother with a mental health condition, Sarah advocates as a peer educator with the mental health awareness program End the Silence and is a member of The National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI). Sarah holds a BA in journalism and lives, writes, and acts in Los Angeles with her husband.
Description
Genre
Non-fiction
Book description
Back Cover/Blurb:
Sarah has a secret-no one else knows she was raised by a mother with an untreated mental health condition. At a young age, a terrifying fear developed inside of Sarah that she and her mother could someday end up on the streets. Feeling like the only little girl in the world with a mother like hers, Sarah has nobody she can relate to.
When Sarah goes to college, she starts to notice similarities between her mother and people on the street who hang out near her campus. She starts to ask herself Why do homeless people remind me of my mother? If they ended up on the street, could that happen to my mother too? For her college internship, Sarah decides to pursue a writing position at a nonprofit for homeless people. She sits and visits with fellow human beings without homes, listening to their stories and feeling their pain, as an unsettling recognition dwells inside Sarah that this could have been her life too.
I Am Human Too is an insightful, thought-provoking journey of how 16 homeless individuals ended up on the street. Putting her journalism skills to use, Sarah writes with gut-wrenching honesty, revealing how she came to understand her mother’s fragile mental state by way of the most overlooked group of people in society, the homeless community.
Target audience
People interested in this book will be well-informed adults, activists, professors, teachers, people of faith, leaders in the non-profit world, individuals interested in memoirs, social justice issues, mental health, and homelessness. Additionally, people who live with a mental health condition or know somebody who has one would read I Am Human Too. This book is a heavy, thought-provoking, gritty drama, NOT a light-hearted, comical read. It will cater to people 16 years and older.
Physical book details
Book cover type
Hardback
Front cover
- Title
- Author’s name
- Subtitle
- Testimonial
Front cover details
* ENDORSEMENT - ADD this Endorsement AT THE TOP OF THE BOOK. "Every so often a book comes around that changes humanity forever. This is that book." - New York Times
* In addition to the information above, I think it's important to know this book is a collection of 16 stories about individual homeless people. Alongside each story is a raw full size portrait (similar to the style of the images in Humans of New York).
* This book is VERY heavily a mother and daughter story. It's told in 1st person as me (the writer) interviews 16 people and learns how to find compassion, healing, and understanding for my own mother's mental health by way of their life stories and wisdom. With this said, I envision a front cover of a homeless woman. The book is intertwined with "eyes" and the pain I found behind the homeless people's eyes, so ideally I would want an image showing a homeless woman's eyes, but her entire face does not have to be shown. I am also open to not seeing her face, and seeing a pair of raw hands. (PLEASE see PINTEREST LINK for my vision.)
* BOOK COVER Vision: https://www.pinterest.com/sarahmmur…er-vision/
* NOTE: While there are 11 men and 5 women's stories in the book, the book comes full circle when I encounter a woman that looks/sounds/acts like my mother so I don't feel it makes a lot of sense to have a homeless man on the cover. It should be a homeless woman. :)
* I will have 1 Testimonial on the front cover.
Back cover
- Blurb
- Publisher’s details
- Price
- Barcode/ISBN
- Testimonial
- Author biography
Back cover details
* I am open to ideas for the back cover! A lot of the portraits in this book are taken with a gritty, reddish brick wall as the back drop. So a brick wall maybe on the front cover, spilling to the back cover is an idea that comes to mind.
* Another thing to note is that all of these stories are told on a concrete ledge. (At one point my editor and I toyed around with the idea of the book being called "Stories On The Ledge." So possibly a girl talking to a homeless person on a ledge could be on the back cover. This could also work for the front cover.
* I will have 2 testimonials on the back.
* The BLURB for the back cover is in the box above
* 1 ENDORSEMENT on front cover- ADD this Endorsement AT THE TOP OF THE BOOK on the front cover. "Every so often a book comes around that changes humanity forever. This is that book." - New York Times
Spine
- Title
- Author’s name
Spine details
* Just those three details on the spine.
Book publisher
Barnes & Noble Press
Visual style
Design inspiration
Colors to explore
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Other color requirements
Creative vision
Style attributes
Design needs
* BOOK COVER Vision AT LINK HERE:
https://www.pinterest.com/sarahmmur…er-vision/
* In addition to the Pinterest link, PLEASE FIND 4 PHOTO ATTACHMENTS Below! I envision the book to have a similar vibe/feeling to ONE of these 4 IMAGES!
* IF you CHOOSE to put a HOMELESS WOMAN on the cover, PLEASE USE the image of the homeless woman ATTACHED! However, I am NOT SOLD on this woman on the cover. I LOVE the idea of a homeless woman's hands holding a sign with the title on it with/or/and maybe a flower as some sort of inspiration that HOPE is not lost although they lost their home.
*This is not a rainbows and butterflies book so I don't want pretty fonts, cursive letter or bright colors. I want bolder and darker colors, think grays, reds, blacks, possibly darker greens/blues.
* There will also be a small sticker on every book that says "This Book Feeds People" as a portion of each book sale will go directly back to feed the homeless people. With this said, I imagine a memorable book cover that sits with you and has an impact.
What to avoid
*The book has a very similar style to the book "Humans Of New York" in the sense that next to each homeless person's story is a colored, portrait of them to go with it, but I am NOT A FAN of that book cover so please don't dive to deep into that book cover for reference. I am only informing you of this so you know that this book has 16 portraits inside of it.
* AVOID - things that are too sweet, soft, playful, and girly.
* AVOID - no men/males on cover, it's a mother and daughter story at the core, but I don't want a feminine cover. I hope this makes sense!
Files
Stock images
Client allowed the use of stock for this contest.
Stock images are licensed photos and vector files. Please declare stock when you submit designs so that clients can pay for licenses.
Attachments
THIS is the exact concrete ledge where the book interviews of the homeless people took place. It would be great to see a visual like this on the front cover. PLEASE DO NOT add the window. The ledge, greenery, colors, and maybe the brick wall are the most important here!
Contest deliverables
1 x Physical book cover
Final files
If you use fonts that require a license, confirm with the client they're ok with it. For licensing reasons, it is better to provide your client with information on how to acquire the font rather than providing the actual files.
Replac with THIS photo!