Eager young bookworms at W.S. Hornsby Elementary School have a new means to find their favorite books or discover new ones—which entails, of course, more reading.
Thursday morning, the school unveiled its new book vending machine. Manufactured by Global Vending Group, the customized dispenser accepts tokens from prospective readers. Students earn tokens via attendance, good behavior, academic performance and meeting monthly reading goals.
“The book vending machine is being used as a positive incentive for our students,” said Hornsby Elementary Principal Gregory Shields.
The school received grant funds awarded by the Community Foundation for the CSRA to purchase both the vending machine and its first few books.
Hornsby Elementary is a partner in the Community Foundation’s Literacy Initiative, the nonprofit’s organized effort to fund research and programs to increase literacy and productive learning. Another partner school, Lamar-Milledge Elementary, also has a book vending machine.
“And so we spoke with them,” Shields said. “We wanted to see exactly how we can actually have that in our in our school as well.”
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Hornsby Elementary also participates in the statewide Growing Readers program, which encourages students to develop a love for reading and supports teachers in increasing the number of students to read at grade level.
The children were “extremely excited,” Shields said, once the vending machine, still covered up, arrived in the school building in December.
“They’ve been looking, they’ve been probing, pulling at the curtain to actually see the book vending machine,” he said.
Once a student has received a book from the machine, it’s theirs to keep, much to the satisfaction of students, like third-grader Paris Cunningham, who intends to earn tokens to collect all the books, and whose favorite on display in the vending machine is “Dream Big,” by Deloris Jordan.
“Because it’s just better to have big dreams,” she said.
The public are encouraged to donate books for the vending machine—as its current supply is expected to go fast—by contacting the school, reaching Shields or Assistant Principal Stephanie Hemingway.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
