Passage 46

学霸导读　一双合脚的鞋对孩子身心的健康成长都很重要。为了解决一些家庭买不起鞋的问题，肯顿·李设计了一款特殊的鞋。

Children grow quickly， especially their feet. But some families cannot a 1 new shoes when a child needs them. As a result， about 300 million children around the world go barefoot. These children risk picking up diseases and parasites （ 寄生虫 ） from the soil.

An American man has a s 2 for those barefoot kids—a shoe that grows with the child. Kenton Lee is the creator of The Shoe That Grows. He explains how the shoe works and how it is able to last so long.

“It grows in three places： the front， the side and the back with the child. It can last up　to f ive years. The b 3 is compressed （ 压缩的 ） rubber like tire rubber. The top is just high- quality leather.”

The shoe comes in two sizes： the small that f its children aged 4 to 9 and the large for children aged 9 to 14. Lee says he got the idea for the shoe while working as a v 4 in an orphanage in Kenya. “... and there was a little girl in a white dress walking next to me. And I just remember looking down and seeing how small her shoes were. And she had to c 5 open the front of her shoes to let her toes （ 脚 趾 ） stick out. At that time I just remember thinking， wouldn’t it be nice if there were a pair of shoes that could grow with her feet？” However， Lee says it was i 6 to turn his idea into a reality at that time. “Yet I kept writing down I should do this because of this or because of that. All these reasons why it really was important for me to try to make the shoes grow are to try to help them.” Finally， in 2009 Lee founded a non-prof it organization called Because International. Together， they have sent over 50，000 pairs of shoes to 70 countries. Lee says a pair of shoes gives a child self-worth and more chances to succeed b 7 much protection.

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高频词汇

pick up /pɪk ʌp/　染上（疾病）

orphanage /'ɔːfənɪdʒ/　n. 孤儿院

stick out　伸出，探出；坚持到底