Still reading

Contrary to context clues, Facebook is not a book.

Portland Police Department, however, is using the world’s most popular social media site to post videos of its officers reading children’s books.

Its goal? To provide a bit of normalcy to children during the coronavirus pandemic by reading books, something officers would normally be doing at schools if had kids in them.

“This provides something besides all the negative things that they’re seeing all the time,” said police chief Nathan Springer, who read “A People House” by Dr. Seuss in one video. Other videos, which can be found at facebook.com/PortlandINPD/videos, include officers reading more Dr. Seuss books and “The Three Little Pigs,” and Shana Leavell, a nurse in the emergency room at IU Health Jay, reading a book about a boy with two belly buttons.

“I enjoyed reading the book … I’ve never read it before,” said Paula Bonvillian, who read “Mr. Brown can MOO!” on Monday.

Bonvillian added that the videos, some of which have thousands of views, have received a lot of positive feedback from the community.

Springer said he hopes to post as many videos as possible of readings of books to build a “video vault” of readings for children, who are forced to stay home from school because of the pandemic, and is hoping to get as many people in the community reading books on the department’s page as possible.

West Virgina-based John Buckland, who made an appearance in Jay County last year as Batman, live streamed a reading of a book he wrote on the police department’s Facebook page Thursday morning.

The department is also working on posting a video of a tour of city hall, something it usually does in person for children but cannot because of the pandemic.

According to a study by the American Academy of Pediatrics, a high level of reading exposure to 3- to 5-year-olds was directly correlated with a higher level of mental imaging and language comprehension in the brain.