Book vending machine is feeding young minds in Hanover

HANOVER COUNTY, Va. -- Henry Clay Elementary School just got a new gadget that's motivating kids to open a book.

"We built up suspense with the help of the school staff and wrapped it with big question marks around the paper and everything for a few weeks," said PTA board member, Martha Miller. “We let the kids guess."

"We have something very, very exciting. It is Inchy the Book Vending Machine,” said Henry Clay Elementary School Principal Terri Keck. “Our children sometimes struggle with reading and we wanted to really motivate them and engage them into wanting to read."

The machine is there thanks to the hard work of Miller and the rest of the PTA's fundraising efforts.

Students earn gold coins through reading assignments, homework, grades, and then they use the coins in the book vending machine.

"Kids can just punch their letter and number choice for the book that they want," said Miller. “And the little dials spin, and in knocks a book down and they get to pick it up and take it home."

So, how do the students like it?

"It's making all the kids in my class so excited to read because they're like, really want to get the new book, but they have to read to get a book. So it's all reading and it makes them super excited. Yeah. And some of the kids in my class never liked reading. But since this came out. They're like, oh, I actually like reading now," shared one student.

Building excitement about reading... and Building Better Minds.