Looking for Your Next Book?
Kennebunk Free Library staff love helping patrons find their next great read! We invite you to email us or call us at 207-985-2173, and we also welcome you to check out the online forms and resources on this page.Please visit our New Materials page to learn about items that arrived at the library recently and to find out whether we have this week's New York Times bestsellers available in our various collections (print, large print, audio, ebook, eaudio)?
Request a Book Stack Customized for You
Would you like to start the new year by borrowing a stack of books handpicked by a librarian? We’d love to choose some books for you! Request a book stack by filling out the Google Form below. If you'd only like a list of titles, rather than an actual book stack, you may request that option on the form. A KFL library card is required. We'll let you know when your book stack is ready to pick up curbside!Adult/Teen Book Stack Request Form
Request a Book Stack Customized for Your Child
Would you like a librarian to handpick a stack of books for your child? Request a book stack by filling out the Google Form below. A KFL library card is required. We'll let you know when your book stack is ready to pick up curbside!Kids' Book Stack Request Form
Request a Customized DVD Bundle
Want some DVDs, but have no idea what exactly you want to watch? Let the librarians at KFL take care of that! Request a customized DVD Bundle by filling out the Google Form below. A KFL library card is required. We'll let you know when your bundle is ready to pick up curbside!DVD Bundle Request Form
Hot New Releases on Order for January
January 5
Staff Picks for January 2021
Jenny, Library Assistant
If you're looking for a new way to stay active indoors this winter, you might enjoy the YouTube fitness channel Walk at Home by Leslie Sansone. Leslie has been teaching walking fitness classes since the 80s with the idea that aerobic exercise doesn't have to involve dancing or fancy footwork. Pretty much all of the videos are built upon the four basic steps (walking; side steps; knee lifts; and kicks) and then add challenges to further engage your mind and muscles. If you find yourself overly challenged by an exercise, you can always go back to one of the basic steps until you're ready to join back in. Anything goes as long as you're moving to the music and having fun.
Kat, Library Assistant
Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty: Are you thinking about ways you could improve your quality of life in 2021? If so, this might be a good starting point to get a new prospective on how you do you. The author spent 3 years as a monk and uses the wisdom of many religions to explain how to live with intention, courage, compassion and determination. Jay focuses in on what he believes are the roadblocks to our potential and power, helping you develop the skills and tools to breakthrough negativity, anxiety, overthinking and people’s expectations in a practical way. This is an enjoyable journey into possibility.
Kyle, Library Assistant
The World Aflame: A New History of War and Revolution 1914-1945 by Dan Jones and Marina Amaral pace of change the world experienced in the 20th century is both breathtaking and difficult for us to fully wrap our understanding around. Countless books have been written to describe the world wide upheaval that took place between the start of World War I and the conclusion of World War II (1914-1945). But even the most vivid descriptions in words struggle to convey the same emotion, provide the same level of comprehension, or instill in the reader a shared human connection to someone in another time and another place quite like a photograph can. That is what sets this book apart.
In The World Aflame, noted author and historian Dan Jones once again teams up with visual artist Marina Amaral. Amaral’s specialty is the colorization of historical photographs. She takes the black and white originals and, only after much research, adds color to the image that is as historically accurate as possible. It is upon those photographs that this book is built.
Through the roughly 200 colorized photographs and their short accompanying text readers are taken on a global tour of those turbulent years in a way I had yet to experience in a book. We start with a photograph that shows the waning days of the previous era — one taken in London in 1910 of the funeral procession for Edward VII. It included nine kings and emperors along with a host of princess, princesses, and other royalty. Seeing the vivid pomp and splendor, one would easily be forgiven if you momentarily scoffed at the idea that most of these royals, along with the centuries old traditions and institutions that surrounded them, would be deposed or dead within the decade. From there the book progresses chronologically: briefly through the lead up to World War I, then the horrors of the Great War itself before detailing the interwar years, all leading to the climax of World War II.
There are stirring photographs of smartly dressed young men marching in their sendoff parades to glorious battle, followed by the haunting images of battlefields littered with the dead in torn and tattered dress, some still in their complete human form while others having been reduced to mere pieces. There are the stately portraits of the major leaders and players during these years: Chamberlain, Churchill, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Roosevelt, and many others. The most meaningful and lasting images of the book are those of the ordinary people caught up in the storm that was this time period. The Armenian woman kneeling over a dead girl during the genocide at the close of World War I, the starving Russian children during the famines of 1921 and 1922, the Auschwitz entry photo of Czeslawa Kwoka — a 14 year old Roman Catholic Pole deported along with her mother to clear her home village for future German settlement, and a French woman, head shaven, being forcibly paraded through a newly liberated French town to publicly shame her for allegedly consorting with the Germans during occupation are just four of the countless images that stayed with me after I finished the book.
Alongside each photograph is a short, two to four paragraph caption by Dan Jones. The captions give the reader a clear understanding of the who and what is going on in the photograph, along with how this specific freeze frame interconnects with the larger global geopolitical events. The calm, evenhanded manner of Jones’ writing is the perfect compliment to the bold and dramatic nature of the photographs.
This book would serve as a great introduction to the complex storylines of this time period for the novice historian, but it also would provide a deeper human perspective and nuanced narrative for someone well read on this history. As much of our modern world was forged, for better or for worse, during the course of these years, this is an important reading, and viewing, to better understand not only our past but also our present.