School vending machine dispenses books, not snacks.

SPRINGDALE — Sonora Elementary School teachers and staff members hope the building’s newest addition — a vending machine — will help inspire a love of reading in students.

It looks like a typical vending machine, but instead of candy and chips, it dispenses books. The machine’s window last week displayed titles such as A Friend for Dragon, Dork Diaries and Flat Stanley’s Worldwide Adventures.

Unlike most vending machines, this one doesn’t take money. Students receive tokens that they insert to select a book, which is theirs to keep.

Each staff member gets two tokens per month to give away. A student can earn a token for an academic achievement or for good behavior, said Principal Regina Stewman.

Teachers “have the autonomy to use it how they want to reward their kids. They know their kids best,” she said. “But

Sophie Lawson, 9, a fourth-grader at Springdale’s Sonora Elementary School, poses last week with a book that she got from the school’s new vending machine after being chosen by fellow students as the kindest in her class.

(NWA Democrat-Gazette/ Dave Perozek) we want reading to be seen as a reward.”

Stewman and school librarian Sarah Whittle came up with the idea last fall, having heard about such machines in other schools.

The school works on getting free books to kids in various other ways, including as Christmas gifts and at buy-one-get-one-free book fairs. Research shows that when there’s literature in the home and kids see their parents reading, those kids are better readers, Stewman said.

“They’ll value it and see the value in it,” she said. “This is one of the ways we help build their libraries.”

Sonora Elementary paid $4,715 for its machine, money that came from Enhanced Student Achievement funds, Stewman said. That’s money the state distributes to school districts based on the number of students they have who are receiving free or reduced-price meals at school.

The machine comes with 100 tokens and can hold as many as 250 books. The school paid extra to have its machine custom-wrapped so its owl mascot appears on two sides, along with the phrase, “Books build a stairway to your imagination.”

The school used money from its Scholastic Book Fair sales to fully stock the machine. Stewman and Whittle are working on how to sustainably give away and replace 100 books per month. They said they are talking with community partners about that.

The school unveiled the machine to students during an assembly Jan. 31. A school district Facebook post about it that day registered more than 100 shares and nearly 25,000 views — about five times the average for one of the district’s posts, said Rick Schaeffer, director of communications.

The post compelled one reader to ask: Doesn’t Sonora Elementary have a library?

“We do, and kids can check out books and bring them back,” Stewman said. “But there’s something about owning it, putting your name in it, knowing it’s yours forever. And putting it on a shelf and revisiting it later if you want to.”

Whittle said she’s received numerous emails from librarians in the district and other districts seeking details about the machine, which sits in the hall outside the library. A message on the wall above says, “Reading is a gift!”

The school made its first token distribution to students on the day the machine was revealed. Students voted on which student was the kindest among them in each classroom, and those kids received the first tokens.

One of those students was fourth-grader Sophie Lawson, 9. It was “weird,” she said. “Because a vending machine, it’s supposed to be for food. But this is for books.”

She added that she appreciated the chance to get a free book just for being good. She chose Wild Rescuers: Guardians of the Taiga.

The machine came from Global Vending Group, located near Buffalo, N.Y. The company has been in the vending machine business for decades but didn’t start selling book machines until March, said Jay Blumberg, the company’s chief executive officer. They’re called Inchy’s Bookworm machines.

The company has sold more than 300 such machines. About a dozen schools in Arkansas have bought one, Blumberg said. The first Arkansas school to get one was England Elementary in Lonoke County in September, the company’s website said. Sonora Elementary was the first to get a machine in Northwest Arkansas, Blumberg said.

“We haven’t done a lot of advertising. Most of our interest has come from schools talking to other schools,” he said.

The book vending machine was costly to engineer, but it’s been a rewarding venture, Blumberg said.

“Probably the most important thing I’ve been a part of, other than my children being born,” he said. “Very gratifying, very rewarding. I just hope in some small way we’ve helped change education for the better.”