BEEBE -- Zoe McGee, 11, pulled her 2-year-old cousin in a red wagon as they headed toward the bus -- a moving mural of sportily dressed and well-read badgers, the Beebe Public Schools' mascot.
This is no ordinary school bus. For one thing, it's not yellow. For another, it talks, makes music and has multicolored lights inside and out. And it's packed with bookshelves.
It's the Beebe Badger Bookmobile, and it's "blazing a reading trail" through the central Arkansas town, says a banner above the vehicle's rear bumper as it goes from one stop to the next.
The bookmobile -- staffed by two librarians at Beebe Elementary School and driven by a retired coach -- made its first stops in the White County town of almost 8,000 residents last week.
The bus lends books to children and adults in Beebe on Mondays through Thursdays and rotates among more rural towns in the Beebe School District -- Floyd, Antioch, McRae and El Paso.
"Literacy for our whole community is really our whole mission," librarian Kay Calvert said.
Thousands of books have been gathered for the mobile library, largely through donations -- so many that not all are shelved yet, librarian Kaye Finley said.
As Zoe, 2-year-old Ta'Miyah Tims and 8-year-old Tai Yah Tims boarded the air-conditioned bus Wednesday, driver and retired coach Robin McClure cheerfully greeted them, "Good morning, girls!"
By then, other neighborhood children knew to expect the bus at its usual time, about 15 minutes after the school system delivers lunches to children at designated locations, such as churches, throughout the district.
"We're about feeding their bodies and their minds," Calvert said.
Like an ice-cream truck, the bus also announces its presence in a neighborhood. This time, it was broadcasting an audio recording of a children's book, Camp Rex, as the vehicle turned into the parking lot of Mount Arratt Baptist Church.
The girls returned books they had checked out earlier in the week and browsed the shelves along with toddlers, elementary- and middle-school-age children, parents and at least one grandmother.
From a picture book about Elmo of television's Sesame Street to The Hunger Games trilogy and classics such as Oliver Twist, the books are arranged by age level with those for preschoolers at the front of the bus, those for adults at the back and the others in between.
"I really like to read. We started a book club," Zoe said. "When we go home, that's all we do. I go to my room" and read.
Zoe grabbed a copy of a book in the popular Clementine series, a collection of illustrated stories about a third-grade girl, and the Christian best-seller 90 Minutes in Heaven.
The older girls helped Ta'Miyah find a picture book they could read aloud to her later. But the barefoot toddler with a pink ribbon in her hair and red polish on her toenails didn't have to wait.
Calvert sat the toddler on her lap and began reading aloud from Bugs That Go Bump in the Night. When Calvert got to the part about "a skeleton bug," Ta'Miyah's eyes and mouth opened wide, and she grinned again and again. When Calvert finished the story, Ta'Miyah was ready for a second read.
The school retrofitted the older bus, which the district had retired from transporting children.
Employees in the school's wood shop and maintenance section did most of the work, helping the district keep the cost under $20,000.
There are now small benches built over the wheels where people can sit. In place of windows and seats, there are built-in bookcases with adjustable shelves that slant to prevent books from falling when the bus moves. The shelves and the floor are a light-colored laminate. The bus now has a speaker system that can broadcast music or book recordings, and it has brightly colored LED chaser lights.
The school hired a business to put a vinyl wrap on the bus -- a mural of computer-generated, graphic images of studious badgers devouring books, such as one simply titled BB.
The school got a late start this summer with the bus but plans to take it to several events after school starts: ballgames, a homecoming parade, and fair and Christmas parades, Finley said.
The bus may even visit preschools this fall, Calvert said.
For now, the bookmobile is off to a busy start.
"We checked out about 50 on the first day" and again the next day, Calvert said.
Inside, Calvert and Finley give the library visitors Beebe Badger Bookmobile bags and bookmarks.
Stopping by the bus for a brief visit last week, Curtis Hamric, a school wood-shop employee who helped get the bus ready, couldn't help but be proud of the accomplishment.
"When a kid learns how to read, they can't take that away," he said.
Zoe said she and her cousins have started waiting for the bookmobile so they can be the first ones on it.
"We really like books because it's like [they take you] into a whole new world, a whole new adventure," she said.
State Desk on 08/02/2015