Octopus Bookshop officially opened on June 9 at 41 Main St. in Kennebunk, Maine, when co-owners Michele Dubois and Renee Seinfeld "swung open a front door adorned with a tentacle-shaped handle--suckers and all--and welcomed visitors into a literary world filled with fiction, memoirs, biographies, history, mystery, horror, children's tales and more," the Portsmouth Herald reported.
"Even though we've not read all these books, we've chosen them specifically," Dubois said. "We want the bookstore to feel like you've walked into another world so that you can experience more diversity."
The inspiration for the bookshop's name came from the notion that "an octopus is intelligent, a quality often associated with reading and learning. Secondly, an octopus is coastal. Like Kennebunk," the Herald wrote. "And, if you're like Dubois and Seinfeld and enjoy reading multiple books at a time, then, well, wouldn't you like to have as many arms as an octopus with which to hold them all?"
The main room of the shop is dedicated to adults, while a small area in the back, featuring cuddly stuffed animals and comfortable seats, is the children's books section. Another room has shelves filled with history books, which are proving to be a popular draw, according to the owners.
Before becoming bookstore owners, Dubois and Seinfeld owned and operated Ronel J. Dubois Insurance Agency in Sanford, which they sold last year, allowing them to invest in "a shared dream come true--a dream that each of them had early on in their childhood before they even met in Boston in 2001," the Herald noted.
"When I was a kid, I would take my books off my bookshelves and would lay them all out on my bed and put little price tags on them," Seinfeld said. Dubois recalled that she and family friends had the dream as early as when they were in junior high school: "We would talk about how it would be cool to have a bookstore."