Striving to make access to books and reading a core part of the care that kids receive in the hospital, with the premise that literacy support for children fighting cancer and other life-altering conditions can help promote cognitive health and social connections that are part of thriving through treatment and beyond
Today was outpatient book delivery day! ECBC re-stocked our gifting cart at CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center (OPI) and our mini library at the Oncology Clinic — gifting approximately 400 new books for patients of all ages, infant through teen/young adult. ECBC also delivered to CHOC 10 more Read Think Thrive Bags, which are our book bags filled with ten new books and book crafting supplies — to be gifted to patients who are newly diagnosed with cancer. So in total, we delivered just over 500 new books to the OPI and Oncology Clinic today! While setting up the library cart at OPI today, I witnessed an elementary school aged boy select a nonfiction book about rocks and minerals (with actual minerals included) — and while he waited to be called for his infusion, he chose to read the book with his dad (rather than play on a device)! #readthinkthrive #thriveagainstcancer
If you’d like to contribute to next month’s outpatient delivery day, CLICK HERE to access Ethan’s Targeted Wishlist Fundraiser for February, which is focusing on board books.
This week we received book donations from three fantastic community partners: National Charity League (NCL) North Tustin, Baum Orthodontics, and Arvida Book Co! NCL collected 103 new books and wrote “Care Cards” for our book bags that go to kids when they are diagnosed with cancer. Their donation included a ton of board books for infants/toddlers, which are our greatest need as we have to buy them weekly. We just picked up 100 books from Baum Ortho, who has collects books for ECBC on an ongoing basis for several years — largely through their retainer replacement program (families get a huge break on their new retainer if they donate books — how awesome!). And, Arvida has a book donation box onsite so customers can purchase new books to donate — this time, we received 40 books from them, just one of many donations that they provide throughout the year.
Each of these three are considered ECBC Thrive Partners, which are repeat donors who continue to support ECBC from year to year. We give out 500 new books per month to kids at CHOC Children’s Hospital, and these partnerships are how we keep it going. Thrive Partners are especially helpful for our tiny all volunteer-based nonprofit organization because they provide our charity with much-needed passive bookraising opportunities. Thank you NCL North Tustin, Baum Ortho, and Arvida!
If you are a Tustin or nearby business and interested in having a book collection box onsite, or if you are a philanthropic organization and want to host a book drive, please email ali@ECbookclub.com. Per hospital infectious disease rules, all books must be brand new.
2023 was productive and impactful for ECBC! We gave away a total of 5816 new books to CHOC Children’s Hospital patients across our various inpatient and outpatient book gifting programs, averaging approximately 500 books per month. And our incredible group of bedside reader volunteers delivered 500+ private read-aloud sessions at patients’ bedside — these interactive sessions target literacy skills, complex thinking, and are often kids’ only non-medical related conversations of the day. We also brought our annual fundraiser, BOOK IT Racing for Reading for Hospitalized Kids, back to an in-person event for the first time since before Covid, with approximately 550 participants/volunteers and raising more than $40,000 in profit (just about equal to our current program expenses). THANK YOU to our amazing community for supporting ECBC — every monetary donation, book donation, book drive, “runner for reading”, and social media shout-out has mattered and allows ECBC to keep on going. And a special thank you to ECBC’s small but mighty Board of Directors — Susie Alexander, Anne Case, Mary Kay Viscounty, and Dr. Van Huynh — I am so deeply grateful for the commitment and contributions of each of you.
Going forward in 2024, ECBC is moving into its 9th year of book and reading programs at CHOC. This year, ECBC plans to continue to promote hospitalized kids’ cognitive health and thrivership by:
GROWING our inpatient reading program to more expert reader volunteers, more days per week, more patient floors, and greater impact on kids’ thrivership during their hospital stays. We hope to move closer to our ultimate goal of offering reading to patients daily, consistent with decades of research that shows the benefits of reading aloud at least fifteen minutes per day.
SUSTAINING our high levels of book donations across our various book gifting programs — including our gifting libraries at CHOC’s Oncology Clinic and Outpateint Infusion Center so that every child visiting the clinic or OPI can select a high-quality book to keep; our holiday book gifting such as BOO-ks for Treats on Halloween and our December holiday book gifting; our book gifting to patients in isolation via our mobile library cart; and our Read Think Thrive (RTT) Bags for patients as they are diagnosed with cancer (valued at $150/bag). We hope to someday be able to expand beyond CHOC to provide our RTT Bags to additional kids who are diagnosed with cancer — though this is a more distant goal given the significant additional funds and storage space that would be required for more inventory. Sustaining means continued monetary and book support to continue to meet our hefty book gifting numbers of approximately 5000 books ($5000) per month.
RECRUITINGmore members to join Teens Thrive Reading Group (TTRG), our virtual book club for teen and young adult cancer warriors that includes gifting Kindles, monthly books, and curated book discussion by ECBC co-founder Ethan. As this is a virtual program that is not hospital or storage space dependent, this year we hope to expand TTRG beyond CHOC to include oncology teens from around the country.
EXPANDINGour impact by providing parents with resources to help them optimally support their kids’ cognitive health through treatment with books and reading. The hope is that this can include online methods as well as eventual in-person group sessions with parents during hospital stays.
OBTAININGoffice/storage space! We have spent the past 7+ years with a small offsite storage unit and using our founder’s house as the main source of our storage (the hospital has very little storage space). As we grow our organization, we are in great need of a single space for book storage, book delivery and processing, and our volunteer activities (like filling the canvas bags for new diagnoses or sorting/stamping the hundreds of books that we gift each month). This is a huge and organizational-changing goal for ECBC that requires an additional $2000 per month to make happen. As such, we are looking for champions of ECBC’s mission who are willing to commit to a recurring monthly donation so that we can afford to make this leap and then sustain the increased operating costs. We’re hopeful that we can make this happen in 2024!
To commit to a recurring donation and become an ECBC GEM (Give Every Month), please CLICK BELOW. Select your desired level of support or enter your own amount, and check the “Make this a monthly donation” box.
Thank you for helping ECBC help Orange County’s hospitalized kids to thrive with high-quality books and reading experiences! ECBC is a public-benefit non-profit corporation, EIN 83-2934289.
If you’re looking to make an end-of-year gift to a charity before January 1, please consider supporting ECBC! We are currently gifting approximately 500-600 new books per month to patients at CHOC, and donations are greatly needed to meet this significant demand. All donations will go directly towards helping hospitalized kids (especially kids battling cancer and other life-altering conditions) thrive through treatment with high-quality books and read-aloud experiences. For example, a $20 donation may buy a book for a child who is inpatient on the oncology floor; a $150 donation may provide a book bag containing a mini-library of age and gender appropriate literature for a child just recently diagnosed with cancer; and a $250 donation may provide a Kindle and monthly Kindle books for a teenage oncology warrior. Note that there is also an option to commit to a recurring monthly donation, which is a huge blessing for our tiny nonprofit. All donations are tax-deductible (ECBC Is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, EIN 83-2934289), and donors are acknowledged on the items they fund. You can click on the link below to donate.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! ECBC has enjoyed celebrating the holidays with CHOC patients by providing holiday-themed literary joy throughout the month. For the last few weeks, we have been reading aloud wonderful Christmas and other December holiday literature to patients at bedside through our bedside reading program. We have also gifted new holiday books to kids who are inpatient and stuck in isolation via our mobile gifting cart. We delivered a substantial number of holiday book to the outpatient side of the hospital — the Outpatient Infusion Center and the Oncology Clinic — more than 500 new titles. We provided storytime at Miracle Manor’s Christmas party (Miracle Manor is Miracles for Kids’ subsidized housing for families of CHOC patients). And, we delivered holiday cards to CHOC patients that were handwritten by local elementary and high school students. In total, we gave away approximately 800 books this month that hopefully resulted in additional quality time with excellent Christmas/Hanukkah/Diwali/Kwanzaa literature!
THANK YOU to everyone who donated books this month and helped to make this all possible. If you would like to make an end-of-year gift to ECBC to help fund our December book gifting, please click on the link below. Note that there is also an option to commit to a recurring monthly donation, which will help to fund our ongoing monthly book gifting (which is about 500 books/month — approximately $5000 in cost per month). All donations are tax deductible (ECBC Is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, EIN 83-2934289).
Thank you for helping Orange County’s hospitalized kids to thrive through the holidays with high-quality books and reading!
THANK YOU to Tarbut V’Torah (TVT) Community Day School’s Lower Campus for conducting another AWESOME book drive for ECBC alongside your school’s book fair! TVT donated a total 397 new books in literally every category that we need them, and as usual they are all terrific highly popular titles. TVT has always used friendly competition to boost student participation, and this year they had a different twist: Every class that donates 25 books would receive an ice cream party, and the grade level to donate the most books also would receive a lunch party. What a brilliantly inclusive way to structure the competition! Congratulations to the 4th graders for donating the most books!
A special shout-out to the Leadership class for promoting the book drive by making posters to put around campus. And thank you to Kimberly Lee and Leigh Choueke for all your work in helping to coordinate the book drive. And thank you TVT for providing fun incentives! This is the SEVENTH year that TVT has conducted a book drive for ECBC — collecting anywhere between 200 to 1000+ books for us each year and a total of 2625 books across the years. TVT, you have made a difference in the success of our tiny non-profit! We are so very grateful for this partnership.
In honor of Giving Tuesday, please consider donating a holiday book for kids stuck at or visiting CHOC in the month of December! We need holiday-themed books of all types — board books, picture books, easy and middle grade chapter books, teen/YA fiction, joke and activity books, graphic novels, and holiday fact/nonfiction.
ECBC just received 212 awesome new books from Yorba Linda Middle School! A HUGE thank you to all of the Yorba Linda families who donated! And a special thank you to the ASB students for leading the book drive efforts. ASB created custom book donation boxes for each teacher’s classroom; they made posters with book drive information to display around the school; they further advertised the book drive on YLMS “Bobcat TV”; and they counted, organized, and bookplated all of the books. ASB also added some friendly between-classroom competition into the mix to boost book donations — congratulations to Mrs. Mucho’s classroom for coming in first place with 89 donated books and winning a donut party! And thank you also to ASB teacher Ms. Sundrstum for helping ASB to lead such a successful first book drive for ECBC! Schools provide the majority of the books for our gifting library, so we are deeply grateful to have a new partner in Yorba Linda Middle School (who has agreed to do this annually)! Thank you YLMS!
Thank you CarterStrongForever for your annual CarterStrong book drive! We LOVE receiving Carter’s favorite books — he had the best taste in books, and it’s so fun to get to share them with CHOC patients year after year!
A new ECBC support club was just started by students at at El Dorado High School in Yorba Linda! Club founders Leila Do (President), Mialani Tran (VP), and Madi Huang (publicity) titled their club Books for CHOC, and they received 100 student sign-ups at club rush! Similar to the ECBC support club at Foothill High School, this club aims to support the mission of ECBC by helping to provide books and literacy support materials for ECBC’s ongoing programs at CHOC Children’s Hospital. They plan to conduct one fundraiser or book raiser each semester; make holiday cards, care cards, and bookmarks; and help to decorate book donation boxes. And they will offer community service hours for students who participate in their activities. Congratulations Lelia, Mialani, and Madi on your new club; we can’t wait to see what you do!
ECBC is so grateful for the few existing ECBC support clubs, as they help to spread awareness about our cause, assist with the high volume of books ECBC needs for donations each month, and result in wonderful student-created materials (e.g., cards, bookmarks) that are creative and personal. The clubs also provide high school students with impactful leadership opportunities so they are a win-win for all!
If you or a teen you know is interested in starting a club at your own high school, please check out the information/ideas sheet below. Contact Ali at ali@ECbookclub.com to learn more.
Thank you Laguna Road Elementary School in Fullerton for conducting a book drive for ECBC alongside their Fall book fair last month. Laguna Road donated 129 new, fantastic books for patients of all ages! A very special shout out to oncology warrior and CHOC patient Will. Will was invited to Laguna Road to share his story, and when asked who which charity he wanted the school to support in honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, he selected collecting books for ECBC! THANK YOU Will for so awesomely advocating for ECBC and making a difference for patients at CHOC!
ECBC had a BLAST yesterday hosting our annual BOO-ks for Treats at CHOC’s Halloween event! We gave away 428 new Halloween-themed books to costumed patients and their siblings who trick-or-treated at the hospital – -with patientgs having a fantsatic selection to choose from including traditional Halloween stories, Halloween joke books, anthologies of ghost stories, teen horror, spooky comic-style graphic novels, and books of creepy facts! This is a favorite event for ECBC — it’s so fun to be behind the thrill that kiddos (and their parents) express when coming up on our booth and realizing they get to pick out a wonderful book or two to add to their stash of candy and trinkets!
Thank you to everyone who supported our Halloween book drive leading up to BOO-KS for Treats — which requires a large number of specific titles to be collected quite quickly! And a huge shout out to Kera Montoya and Paper Pie for hosting a fundraiser that provided a significant number of books and helped us get to the totals we needed. Thank you also to Foothill High Schools Ethan & Choco Club for making awesome Halloween cards to give to patients as well. We so appreciate our community’s support in making this event happen!
This week we re-stocked our gifting libraries at CHOC’s Outpateint Infusion Center and the Oncology Clinic with 455 new books — with several hundred of them being super fun Halloween-themed titles. We still need many more Halloween books for our big BOO-ks for Treats event next week on the inpatient side of the hospital. Please donate if you can!bit.ly/Halloweenbooks4ECBC
THANK YOU to Paper Pie and Kera Montoya for these awesome 75 new Halloween-themed books! And thank you to everyone who supported Kera’s Cards for a Cause fundraiser which raised the funds for these books! We still need several hundred more Halloween books for our BOO-ls for Treats event at CHOC! Donate at http://bit.ly/Halloweenbooks4ECBC or click on link below.
October is here, and so it’s time for our annual Halloween book drive! ECBC is so excited that our BOO-ks for Treats Halloween book give-away is finally back as part of CHOC’s trick-or-treating event! This event holds a very special place in our organization’s heart, especially ECBC co-founder Ethan’s. Ethan was diagnosed with cancer a few days before Halloween in 2014, and on Halloween day Ethan had his port surgically placed in his chest, started chemotherapy, and also dressed up and went trick-or-treating in the CHOC lobby at dozens of fun booths giving away candy and small toys. A year later, we founded ECBC and then BOO-ks for Treats, so that CHOC patients could also trick-or-treat for literary candy (aka books)! During Covid, we had to deliver Halloween books “reverse trick-or-treating” style, in bags to patient rooms — which was not nearly as fun. So we are thrilled to be back!
Which means that we need a TON of Halloween-themed books for patients of all ages! Spefically, we need about 500 books for the trick-or-treating event, and then another several hundred for our outpatient gifting library carts. Please help us if you can! To donate, you can scan the QR code below or go to bit.ly/Halloweenbooks4ECBC to purchase a book off our Halloween Wish List on Amazon. All books will be sent directly to ECBC and bookplated with donor names. We need books of all types — from board books and picture books to easy chapter books, middle grade chapter books, graphic novels, and teen/young adult fiction. THANK YOU for providing literary joy to kids who are stuck in the hospital on Halloween!
THANK YOU to these Tustin Unified School District elementary schools for hosting book drives for ECBC last week: Hicks Canyon, Arroyo, and Guin Foss. All three schools collected books for Ethan & Choco’s Book Club as part of their fall book fairs, and all three schools do this regularly, 1-2 times per year alongside their book fairs. ECBC is currently donating 500-600 new books per month to CHOC patients, and most of these books come from school book drives. So it is a big deal to have “regulars” whom we can count on for incoming books! A special shout out to Hicks Canyon parent Tina Jussal, Guin Foss Librarian (and ECBC Board Member) Susie Alexander, and Arroyo parent Claudia Rounaghi for coordinating your school’s book drive efforts!
Please contact ECBC (ali@ECbookclub.com) if your school would like to partner with ECBC and run your own book drive! There are meaningful ways to involve students as desired, especially if your school’s ASB/leadership class would like to take it on!
Today was outpatient book delivery day! ECBC re-stocked our gifting cart at CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center (OPI) and our mini library at the Oncology Clinic — gifting a total of 500 new books for patients of all ages, infant through teen/young adult. ECBC also delivered 15 Read Think Thrive Bags, our book bags filled with ten new books and book crafting supplies — to be gifted to patients who are newly diagnosed with cancer. This typical outpatient delivery amounts to a cash value of approximately $7500 and wouldn’t be possible without the support of our community via our annual fundraiser and ongoing throughout the year.
Next up: We are going to need a HUGE amount of Halloween-themed books! Please keep an eye out for our Halloween book drive, or consider hosting your own Halloween book drive at your school, business, philanthropy group, or book club!
Thank you Baum Orthodontics for these 117 new books! Your ongoing book drive and regular donations are such a blessing for ECBC!
Baum Ortho collects books regularly for ECBC, in part by offering patient families deals on their retainer replacements if they donate new books. How AWESOME is that?! ECBC is in need of more partnerships like this with our community to help keep up with the 500-600 new books that we provide to CHOC each month. Please contact us (ali@ECbookclub.com) if you’d like to encourage your clients/customers/patients/community to donate new books and become an ECBC book donation site!
Community partnerships like this one with Baum Ortho are passive bookraising for ECBC and make such a difference for our tiny nonprofit!
A HUGE thank you to our AWESOME community for joining us this past Monday at Ethan & Choco’s Book Club’s (ECBC) 6th annual (3rd in-person) charity run and book drive — BOOK IT! Racing for Reading for Hospitalized Kids! Approximately 400 racers (and nearly 550 total including volunteers, exhibitors, vendors, authors, and booksellers) came to walk, run, fundraise, bookraise, and make our event an amazing success! The net amount of funds raised is still to be determined, but between our event sponsors and online + onsite donations, we exceeded our gross fundraising goal of 50K and collected another few hundred books per the onsite book drive. This will allow us to sustain our current book and reading programs at CHOC Children’s Hospital.
In addition to walking or running in our 1K and 5K events, it was fun to see so many supporting our cause in a variety of ways: dressing up as a children’s book character and participating in the Literary Character Costume Contest; visiting author and bookseller booths to purchase books, meet authors, and get autographs; contributing to our book drive by dropping purchased books into our book donation boxes, funding a book on the Handprint Wall, and purchasing raffle tickets; using the photo booth with literary props and receiving printed photos to keep; jumping in the bounce house; having faces painted and cartoon caricatures drawn; receiving fun wearable balloon art; visiting our many exhibitor and vendor booths; enjoying great breakfast and coffee treats from our food trucks; attending storytime on the stage with our authors; and winning great prizes at the culminating book drive raffle drawing. It was so fun to see so much activity and energy going towards our cause, with so many in their BOOK IT! logo shirts and sporting “Run Read Thrive” medals! Congratulations to top 5K finishers (top male finisher Nathan Kneller, top female finisher Lauren Mansy), the winning team “Caleb’s Team”, and all age division winners.
Thank you to Jeffrey Trail Middle School, Irvine Unified School District, and the city of Irvine for providing us with a fantastic location with a beautiful course! Thank you to A5 Events and Ryan Kugler for their expertise in the many layers of permitting the event as well as all aspects of set up and tear down of the exhibit area and course. Thank you to Itz About Time for their seamless professional timing services. Our deepest thank you to the Gerrit and Amy Cole Foundation for stepping up to be our Title Sponsor, and a huge thank you to all of our sponsors: Eisai Inc, Mercer, Jen Schro Catching, 5 Boroughs Book Club, Chapman University, CHOC/Hyundai Cancer Institute, Enderle Center, Paris Family Trust, Sur West Homes, Voit Real Estate, Behr Paint, Blue Buoy, Erin Denes Realtor, Miracles for Kids, Nothing Bundt Cakes, Old Towne Orange Film Festival, Orange Chamber of Commerce, PaKua OC, Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation, Selman Chevrolet, The O’Dell Group of Seven Gables, The Printery, Tiddlywinks, and Zov’s. We couldn’t have pulled this off without all of our terrific event sponsors.
Thank you also to everyone who contributed to our AMAZING expo area! To our awesome booksellers — Tiddlywinks Toys and Games, Arvida Book Co, PaperPie — who provided terrific titles to sell at the onsite book drive. And to our children’s authors — Kim Dwinell, Amber Morell, Tootie Nienow, Jennifer Gray Olson, Dan Paley, Chris Robertson, Susie Schaefer, Kristine Sheleritis, and Kathleen Troy — who sold signed copies of their books and also provided an engaging storytime on the stage. Thank you to all of our exhibitors, vendors, Kids Korner vendors, and food trucks who made the expo area fun and interesting: CHOC Children’s Hospital, Miracles for Kids, MaxLove Project, PaKua OC Martial Arts OC, OC Children’s Book Festival, Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation, Nothing Bundt Cakes, Mom & Pop Shop Popsicles, Daisy Chains, Fully Body Pilates, AKT Tustin, OC Bouncers, Creative Parties for Kids, Annie Banannie, Creative Phototime, Crepes Bonaparte, The Lime Truck, and Carmen’s Coffee. And thank you to the following raffle prizes donors: Zov’s, Kristin Chahbazian, Cirkel Fitness, Sharon & Tod Paris, In-n-Out, Laguna Handbags, TIddlywinks, Irvine Regional Park, The Potting Shed, Rock & Brews, Coast Hardware, Centro/Storico, Patti Wilkins, Trader Joes, Hands On Wellness Center, Nektar, and Studio 17. The 32 awesome prizes you donated added excitement to the book drive and helped to make it a success. Also a shout out to these individuals for donating their time and expertise: Master David Clawson for leading the warm-up, the Foothill High School Madrigal singers for leading us beautifully in singing the National Anthem, Old Towne Film Festival Director Dan Parks for filming BOOK IT on the ground and by drone, photographer Annie White for her professional photography, and CHOC mascot costume wearer veteran MaKenna Clawson for donning the heavy CHOCO suit again this year! A HUGE thank you to the BOOK IT planning committee for their incredibly hard work in the weeks and months leading up to event day — Susie Alexander, Mary Kay Viscounty, Jeanie Viveros, Fenny Kokenge, Kristin Chahbazian, Juliet Hilde, Anne Case, Suzanne Bernardy, Sandy Tweedt, and Patti Wilkins. And, this event could not have happened without the robust group of approximately 100 volunteers who came out to help on race day. Thank you to ECBC’s Bedside Readers, the Assistance League of Tustin, Youth Action Team High School, the National League of Young Men Tustin, the Kiwanis Club of Irvine, and the UCI and Irvine Valley College Circle K Club. This event is a big undertaking for our tiny organization, and it truly does take a community to pull it off. You are all so appreciated.
And finally, thank you to the many individuals and families who signed up and showed up, thus contributing to our great turn-out despite the four-year gap since our last in-person BOOK IT. A special thank you to our largest teams: Foothill High School, Mercer Cares, Ethan’s Family & Friends, Cavalry Church, We Love Literacy – Team Hilde, Anaheim Run Club, OC Parent Guide, and Team Ethan Lakin Loves to Read. The large teams help our numbers so much! And a very special thank you to all of the oncology and other CHOC patients and families who joined us — your strength, perseverance, and bravery inspire us every day to create programs that help you thrive and become tomorrow’s future leaders
Thank you for BOOKing IT for reading for patients at CHOC Children’s Hospital! We sincerely hope that our community views ECBC’s cause as their cause too, benefiting the kids of Orange County who end up in the hospital. See you back next year for BOOK IT 2024!
** If you couldn’t make it on race day but would still like to contribute to our annual fundraiser, it’s not too late! The online book drive/fundraising campaign will be running for a month after the event, until October 4, 2023.
Our full collection of event photos, including shots of all our exhibitors and medal winners, will be uploaded soon.
Today is September 1, marking the start of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. EVERY DAY, 47 KIDS IN THE U.S. ARE DIAGNOSED WITH CANCER. Every day, 47 families’ lives are flipped completely upside down. If you haven’t signed up FOR BOOK IT yet, please consider joining us on Labor Day in Irvine to help ECBC continue to do our part in helping kids to THRIVE against cancer with high-quality books and reading experiences. In addition to the 1K and 5K walk/runs with t-shirts and medals, there will be local authors and booksellers, terrific food trucks, raffle prizes, and FREE fun for kids including bounce house, face painting, balloon artist, caricature drawings, and photo booth with free prints!
