{"id":174815,"date":"2025-08-25T16:58:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T16:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/174815\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T16:58:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T16:58:12","slug":"nascars-erik-jones-brings-his-love-of-reading-and-a-book-vending-machine-to-rymfire-elementary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/174815\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR’s Erik Jones Brings His Love of Reading, and a Book-Vending Machine, to Rymfire Elementary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Erik<\/a>Erik Jones on Friday, doing one of his favorite things away from the track: reading to children. He recently became a father. (\u00a9 FlaglerLive)<\/p>\n

A day before he finished fifth at NASCAR\u2019s regular-season finale at the Daytona International Speedway Saturday, 29-year-old Erik \u201cEJ\u201d Jones had just read Goodnight Racetrack to a few hundred early graders at Rymfire Elementary in Palm Coast when a pin-drop of a voice asked from among them: \u201cWhy did you do all this for us?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got something pretty cool to show you guys in a minute,\u201d Jones replied. \u201cBut I love to read. I\u2019ve loved to read since I was your guys\u2019 age, and my parents loved to read, and I still love to read. So I\u2019m here to hopefully show you guys that reading\u2019s fun. You can learn a bunch as you get older with it as well. I\u2019m just here to read, hang out with you guys and show you something pretty cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are the best driver, and I want to be you,\u201d another small voice said from the audience as Jones took a few questions, poke of his love for Dragons Love Tacos, then unwrapped for them the \u201cpretty cool\u201d thing that had sat under a dark sheet at the cafeteria entrance: a neon-bound book-vending machine. It\u2019s a wonder the screams didn\u2019t shatter the vending machine\u2019s glass case.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>The unveiling of the machine. (\u00a9 FlaglerLive)<\/p>\n

A little boy not much taller than the books was first to drop a token and get himself a copy of Spiderman as Jones posed for pictures and recalled how it all started: \u201cReally early in my career in NASCAR, I was trying to find a way to connect reading to the sport and to the fan base and spread it,\u201d Jones said. \u201cIt actually really started in Covid. We did some readings online, virtually, and they really caught on with kids and the kids\u2019 books. And as we kind of got back into normal live appearances, we learned about these book vending machines through my foundation early on, and children\u2019s literacy was was high on our list. We found pretty quick the kids were really excited about the vending machines, and we donated them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Erik Jones Foundation<\/a> focuses on cancer (Jones lost his father to cancer in 2016), animal rights and literacy. Jones partnered with the Global Vending Group to provide Inchy the Book Worm Vending Machines to schools (not just in Florida). AdventHealth in turn partnered with Jones, who is driving the AdventHealth car at nine of the season\u2019s 36 NASCAR races. The machine costs $9,000. AdventHealth funds and restocks it for about $5,000 a year, says Debbi McNabb, AdventHealth\u2019s director of community benefit. The school works with Advent to recommend \u201cvery carefully selected\u201d titles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn all of those races where we\u2019re the primary, he shows up in a market for us and does something in the community before the race,\u201d Joni Hunt, executive director of strategic partnerships, said. who oversees AdventHealth\u2019s relationship with NASCAR and its relationship with Flagler schools. \u201cAs much as having our name on a car is great, what I think is really amazing is the work we\u2019re doing with him in the community.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Erik<\/a>Erik Jones read \u201cGoodnight Racetrack,\u201d by Andy Amendola and Ashley Newgarden, to the first group of students at Rymfire Elementary. (\u00a9 FlaglerLive)<\/p>\n

It is the fifth book-vending machine AdventHealth has donated, the first in Flagler County (the others in Volusia). Bunnell and Belle Terre Elementary have book vending machines bought by their parent-teacher organizations. The superintendent said the district will \u201cfigure out a way to make sure\u201d that Wadsworth and Old Kings Elementary get their machines soon, though.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

As for AdventHealth\u2019s local connection: Years ago the late Joe Rizzo, when he headed the Flagler Education Foundation, partnered with Wally de Aquino, currently the president and CEO of AdventHealth Palm Coast Parkway, to support numerous initiatives in schools, among them the health-themed Classroom-to-Careers program at Rymfire Elementary. That connection brought the book vending machine to the school.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a literacy director, as a literacy coach previously, this just absolutely warms my heart,\u201d said Theresa Rizzo, who heads the Flagler Education Foundation. \u201cI know how much these elementary school kids are going to love this. They\u2019re going to be excited about it. It\u2019s going to create excitement for them to do the right thing in school, but then also encourages reading as well. So I am thrilled. I am so excited. And I\u2019m so excited that it\u2019s another partnership with us and Advent.\u201d<\/p>\n

McNabb notes that the vending machines aren\u2019t just for the fun of it, but to help push Volusia and Flagler counties\u2019 reading scores above the state average. \u201cWhy would a hospital do this? Because you want our children to be healthy, and children need to know how to read, and read at grade level,\u201d McNabb said. \u201cIt\u2019s really extending that feel-whole promise to everyone, beyond the walls of the hospital.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jones\u2019s appearance had gathered numerous officials from AdventHealth and the school districts, among them Superintendent LaShakia Moore. She is in her element in the schools. It\u2019s still always more special at Rymfire. \u201cI was a principal here for three years, before then I served as a coach and a teacher,\u201d Moore said\u2013an academic coach, that is, for reading and all other subjects. \u201cIt\u2019s always great to come back here and look around and see things that were your little touch on projects here. It\u2019s a great place. Mr. Lee and his team, they\u2019re doing a great job.\u201d Travis Lee is the principal at Rymfire.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Obviously students can borrow books from their school library as much as they wish. But they can\u2019t keep the books the way they can with books out of the vending machine. \u201cI think about my own personal child, who\u2019s now in high school,\u201d Moore said. \u201cShe would love something like this, because she\u2019s always wanting to purchase books and buy books, and so this is an opportunity for them to do it and not have a financial cost or impact to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Superintendent<\/a>Superintendent LaShakia Moore can upstage even a NASCAR star. (\u00a9 FlaglerLive)<\/p>\n

Students may earn a token by following what the schools call PBIS expectations\u2013positive behavioral interventions and supports, the jargon that translates to \u201cbeing respectful, responsible, safe and engaged,\u201d Moore said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re identified as a student that\u2019s doing that, you\u2019re given a token.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones spent time enough at the school to do two sets\u2013two readings, two unveilings, the second for the older students, and in between spoke to reporters about his own eclectic readings. He cited among his most memorable books Siddhartha Mukherjee\u2019s Emperor of All Maladies, the 2011 Pulitzer Prize winning history of cancer, and an autobiography by Bob Probert, the Detroit hokey player. Sitting on his night-table is The Farmer\u2019s Lawyer, the Sarah Vogel memoir (with a Willie Nelson foreword) about the class-action suit the author led on behalf of 240,000 farming families facing foreclosure. The very first book he recalls reading when he was 10 or 11 was about the Wright Brothers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He is interested in writing a book himself\u2013for children.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n