BANGOR – In case local residents were in any doubt, a new nonfiction book about places to live has declared their city to be “fabulous.”

Kathleen Shaputis, a writer and former city employee in Chino, Calif., has listed Bangor in the third edition of her book “50 Fabulous Places to Raise Your Family.”

The communities in the book are not ranked against each other but make up the “top 50 family-friendly communities in the country,” according to the book jacket. They are listed in alphabetical order.

“We appreciate the recognition,” Rodney McKay, Bangor’s community and economic development director, said Friday. “We strive hard to be a great place to live, to work and to enjoy.”

City Manager Ed Barrett said the listing is welcome, but not surprising to people who live in the area. Bangor has low crime, and its economy, schools and outdoor recreation opportunities are all good, he said.

“When you look at that package, it certainly is an unusual community for its size and location,” Barrett said.

In the introduction, Shaputis indicates that she used a list of 15 criteria for choosing which places to include in the book. Typical concerns such as economy, housing, education, crime and taxes are listed, as are environmentally sensitive attitudes, scenic beauty, social diversity and transportation.

Shaputis said that she started with a list of communities nationwide that have received recent recognition for their quality of life. By doing online research and “cold-calling” residents, she winnowed the list down to 50, she said.

“I figure there had to be 300 or more in my research,” she said. “It wasn’t easy.”

The first 50 or so pages are devoted to instructing the reader how to rate communities and priorities when choosing a place to raise a family. The remainder of the book is where a casual reader may find the most entertaining information. It is in the last 300 pages that she names names, listing the communities that made the grade.

Besides Bangor, only three other communities in New England made the book. One of the reasons Portsmouth, N.H., was chosen is that it has the lowest infant mortality rate in the country, according to Shaputis. Providence, R.I., with its recently redeveloped downtown, has a “laid-back personality” while Burlington, Vt., has a low crime rate and excellent educational resources, she wrote.

Bangor, according to Shaputis, “has all the benefits of a large city with none of the problems.”

It has low crime rates, excellent educational opportunities, a steady economy and plenty of things to do, she wrote. Its good quality of life has been recognized by Reader’s Digest and World Trade magazines and twice, in 1997 and 1999, by MacMillan Travel’s Places Rated Almanac.

According to Bangor officials, the list doesn’t stop there. The city’s livability also has been praised or highly ranked by Expansion Management Magazine, Cities Ranked & Rated, and even by Business Week.

Some of the facts listed about Bangor seem a little dated, or at least somewhat debatable.

Shaputis writes that “Maine leads the country with its telecommunications infrastructure,” even though state and business officials have said publicly in the past year that Maine’s high-speed Internet availability and cell phone connectivity need significant improvement.

McKay and Barrett, however, supported the author’s position. They each said infrastructure investment in Maine in recent years has provided libraries with high-speed Internet access and improved the telephone network throughout the state. This is why companies such as MBNA, L.L. Bean, T-Mobile USA and Sitel Corp. have multiple call centers in Maine, they said.

“It kind of depends on what you’re looking for,” Barrett said.

The city’s property tax rate cited by Shaputis is dated, but not drastically different from the current rate of about $22 per $1,000 of value. The figure of $23.35 listed by the author was the city’s tax rate in 2004.

And though no communities in Hawaii are listed in the book, she also claims climate was a factor she considered in compiling the list. No place in Alaska, it should be noted, made the cut.

“An area was permitted one miserable (hot or cold) season, but that’s all,” she wrote.

She acknowledges that Bangor’s weather might not always be ideal. “Mud” is listed as one of Maine’s four seasons, and she wrote that if you are not willing to hunker down indoors during blizzards, “Bangor is probably not the city for you.”

One of the weather-related facts listed about Bangor in Shaputis’ book, however, appears to be incorrect. Barrett’s one-word comment on the statistic was “wrong.”

In a table on Bangor’s climate, the book indicates the city has temperatures of 90 degrees Fahrenheit or warmer for about 94 days a year.

“That’s a little high,” Duane Wolfe, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Caribou, said Friday. “Based on what we know in Caribou, we’re talking a couple of days [of 90-degree weather or higher] a year. Down in Bangor, I can’t see it being more than 25 or 30 days.”

When told about the statistic, Shaputis seemed surprised and acknowledged it is probably a mistake.

“Sounds like a typo to me,” she said.