For two years now, an 11-year-old named Nehemiah Turner has been showing up at the Jacksonville Humane Society with his grandma, sitting down in front of a kennel, and reading out loud — chapter after chapter, dog after dog.
This month he crossed 100 volunteer hours, becoming the first child in the history of the shelter's Pawsitive Reading program to hit that mark. The program — which more than 2,000 kids have taken part in — is built on a simple idea: reading calms anxious shelter animals, and it gives kids a low-pressure way to build literacy skills at the same time. Turns out a nervous dog doesn't care if you stumble over a word.
Turner is heading into sixth grade as a straight-A student, and the shelter honored his milestone with a feature in Kind News magazine. A hundred hours of chapter books, read one page at a time to an audience that just wanted the company.
Source: Action News Jax
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