ECBC had a terrific afternoon yesterday at our FIRST Super Book Give-Away alongside MaxLove Project at CHOC Children’s Hospital! We gave away approximately 70 books to hospitalized kids and their siblings, with our youngest recipient being 22 months and our oldest being a 14-year old boy who said he was allergic to reading but then found a book about Alcatraz that he walked away with eagerly. A CHOC nurse walked by and commented, “It is so great to see books in our lobby, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that!” And a parent of an oncology patient snuck away with a pile of books and whispered to me, “I have to home school my child now, but I always forget to bring books to the hospital. It is just never on my radar.” Both of these remarks confirm why we’re so passionate about ECBC’s mission to bring books and reading to hospitalized kids! It was so fun to put books in kids’ hands, see them reading in the lobby, and watch them walk away excitedly with a new book about a topic of interest!

Because we’re still waiting to get through CHOC’s lengthy volunteer on-boarding process in order to start “Reading Aloud in Every Room” (our bedside reading program), we are working on other ways to get books into the hands of patients NOW! We plan to join MaxLove Project regularly for their monthly BeSuper parties at CHOC, and we are working on setting up other ways to bring reading to CHOC as well (ways that don’t require volunteer approval). To be able to gift books to kids at these events, we need the new books to keep coming in — so PLEASE keep donating if you can. Here’s the link to our Wish List on Amazon — books purchased from this list will be sent directly to ECBC. 

Thank you to Kids READ!, Saddleback Educational Publishing, and PBS SoCal for providing the books for this event!