Hanni, the seeing eye dog, the narrator of Hanni and Beth: Safe and Sound, has been educating second graders from different Chicago public schools on behalf of the Sit Stay Read program for kids and dogs.
Last month she "read" to children at the National Teacher Academy on Chicago's South Side.
Hanni and Beth: Safe and Sound is about life as a seeing eye dog for Beth Finke.
"I wrote it in Hanni's voice because I thought kids might appreciate that although she's working and she's helping me. Sometimes she'd rather not be working and it's hard for her to always have to work," said Finke.
Two years ago, Beth and Hanni got involved with the Sit Stay Read program after meeting someone from the program while speaking at a Barnes and Noble.
"I've heard of programs like that, and so I would bring Hanni in and they'd read to her, but I found out it's much more involved than that, and to be honest, to me, it's much more interesting," said Finke.
Every month they visited a Chicago public school selected by program's volunteers like Tara Gaffney.
"Our goals are to promote literacy within the Chicago Public Schools and to make reading fun for those children," said Gaffney.
This is the program's fifth year.
"We focus mainly with second graders and we also do reading rewards program in third and fourth grade to continue with our students that we started with so we can track their progress," said Gaffney.
Having Hanni and Beth involved in the program increases children understanding of the life of seeing-eye dogs.
p> Hanni and Beth: Safe and Sound won the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal Best Picture Book Award in 2007.