Maine

December is full of holidays around the world: Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, and more. When eight cookies representing different cultures come together, they scramble for a spot on top of the holiday pile. The wise Indian shortbread counsels peace, in this rhyming picture book filled with recipes and facts about traditional cookies from Greece, Germany, Israel, central Africa, the U.S., and Mexico.

A boy and a moose become fast friends in this rhyming charmer from the creators of The Boston Balloonies, The Cods of Cape Cod, and Champ and Me By the Maple Tree. Together, boy and beast play hide-and-seek (not the best game for a moose), walk to the general store, then take a tour of Maine. They fly about in a seaplane, they run the Penobscot River on a raft made of logs, they hang out on a dock in Camden, and they finish off with some chocolate moose cake at a cafe in Portland!

Author Ed Shankman and illustrator Dave O'Neill began creating their award-winning children's books in New England, with stories on Boston, Cape Cod, Maine, and Vermont. In 2011 they turned their attention to New Orleans and in 2013 to the state of Florida. Their latest book, When a Lobster Buys a Bathrobe, does not happen in just one place, but wherever lobsters are found -- and that's almost everywhere Shankman & O'Neill have traveled before...and beyond! With its bouncing rhymes and colorful illustrations, everyone will love reading this charming story again and again!

Beginning as a humble vaudeville hall in the Skowhegan-Madison trolley park, Lakewood Theatre has graced the southwestern shore of Lake Wesserunsett in Madison, Maine, since the turn of the 20th century. Under the masterful guidance of Herbert L. Swett, a Bangor native and Bowdoin graduate, Lakewood eventually developed into a nationally renowned playhouse that was called the "Broadway in Maine" by the New York Times in its heyday, from 1925 until World War II. In the years following the war, Lakewood was operated by Swett's heirs and became a virtual who's who of both Broadway and Hollywood, until it nearly went dark in the early 1980s. Operating today as a nonprofit community theater, Lakewood is the official state theater of Maine and the oldest continually running summer theater in the country.

The first settlers of what would become Bangor, Maine, established a community initially known as Kenduskeag Plantation, and since that time, generations of residents have relied on the Penobscot River for food, water, recreation, industry and transportation--it has provided a route to the ocean and to the world. The people of Bangor created a community that has remained dedicated not only to economic growth but also to providing for the needs of the impoverished. A leading port city and the "lumber capital of the world" during the nineteenth century, Bangor also claims America's second oldest garden cemetery, an unrivaled public library, the nation's oldest community orchestra and one of its oldest community bands. Citizens of Bangor have served in the Civil War and all subsequent American military engagements. They have overcome fires and floods that decimated the city and epidemics that devastated the population. They have known colorful and notorious characters, such as local brothel owner Fan Jones and America's public enemy number one, Al Brady, as well as dedicated individuals and families who have served as community leaders and caretakers year after year, decade after decade. And they have adapted to such modern socioeconomic challenges as evolving transportation methods, the Ku Klux Klan, urban renewal and the city's shift to a distribution and service center. Historian Trudy Irene Scee presents all of this and more in this full history of the Queen City of the East.