Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Store’s closing sends its books behind bars
30,000 volumes donated to lockups
HOT SPRINGS VILLAGE — The mysteries, thrillers and romance novels never sold quickly enough for Judy Schoonover to make a profit at the usedbook store in Hot Springs Village that she opened two years ago.
At the state prison system’s inmate libraries, however, such books are in high demand.
With the help of a classified ad that Schoonover took out on Craigslist, state
“We could never dream of a donation like that, and to have it happen is incredible.”
SHEA WILSON, Arkansas Correction Department spokesman
Department of Correction officials learned last week that Schoonover, facing a series of surgeries for her worsening arthritis, was planning to close her store
and needed someone to take her inventory of 30,000 books.
She just wanted them out of the store quickly, before her first surgery, scheduled for next week.
“You can’t just close the store and walk away and leave that in there,” Schoonover said. “My landlord wouldn’t have been happy with me.”
For Correction Department officials, the decision was easy.
“I asked my boss [Assistant Director Dina Tyler] about it, and she was like, ‘ Yes!’” said Dennice Alexander, the prison system’s senior librarian.
At Schoonover’s store, The Book Place, on Tuesday, Alexander and correction officers watched as a crew of white-uniformed inmates from the prison work-release unit in Benton packed cardboard boxes with books, including John Grisham thrillers, Sue Grafton mysteries and Danielle Steel romance novels.
The boxes were then loaded onto a truck to take them to the Correction Department’s shuttered Diagnostic Unit in Pine Bluff. From there, the books will be distributed to the libraries at 15 prisons across the state.
Alexander said it’s the largest donation that the prison system’s libraries have ever received.
“It’s a blessing,” Alexander said. The inmates, she said, “will be ecstatic.”
While other forms of entertainment vie for people’s attention elsewhere, in prison, reading books remains one of the most popular ways to pass the time.
With 200,000 total books across the system, the libraries “operate on the same basis as a public library,” she said. The inmates check the books out and return them when they are finished.
Prison officials weed out graphic content and books that could pose security threats. Most popular titles, including true crime and even racy romance novels, are allowed.
Westerns, science fiction and “paranormal” titles are among the most commonly checked out at many units, Alexander said.
She added that inmates’ tastes don’t always follow stereotypes.
“We have some units [where] the guys like to read romance, the women like to read westerns and sci- fi,” she said.
Vampire romance novels, she said, are popular “everywhere.”
The system has received donations of as many as a few thousand books at a time, but has never had an entire bookstore donate its inventory, Alexander said.
“We could never dream of a donation like that, and to have it happen is incredible,” department spokesman Shea Wilson said.
Schoonover was also grateful Tuesday, saying the department had helped solve a dilemma that had kept her awake at night.
A longtime reader of mystery novels, she opened The Book Place two years ago after buying the inventory of a store that had closed in Hot Springs.
Accompanied by her dog, Abby, she ran the store for two years with the help of volunteers.
“I think anybody that’s an avid reader always thinks, well, wouldn’t it be fun,” Schoonover said. “Well, it is fun but it’s a great deal of work.”
As her arthritis worsened, she began looking late last year for someone willing to take over the business, but she couldn’t find anyone.
Other bookstores wouldn’t commit to buying the entire inventory.
Finally, with the help of a neighbor, she posted an ad on Craigslist, offering to give away the books to anyone who would load them up before next week.
Thomas Farley, a retiree in Sherwood, went to the store last week after seeing the ad. He decided he wasn’t interested but thought the Correction Department might be.
A few months ago, he had called Alexander, asking about the kind of books she needed for donations. He told Alexander about the Schoonover’s ad, and she contacted Schoonover.
Schoonover, who has baked cookies and prayed for inmates as part her church’s prison ministry, said she was happy that the books are going to a good cause.
“With any luck, they’ll [the inmates] be rehabilitated, and if this helps in some small way, then I’m happy,” she said.
At the store Tuesday, Dante Richmond, a member of the inmate work crew, said he spent hours each day reading library books while he was a housed in the Cummins Unit.
Among his favorites: National Geographic magazines and books by James Patterson and John Grisham.
While he was working Tuesday, he said, some of the titles caught his eye.
“I do a lot of reading now — more than I did when I was free,” Richmond said. “The more you read, the more it makes you want to read.”