Ethan & Choco's Book Club

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

Category Archives: Book Drive


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THANK YOU TVT!!!

HOW COMPLETELY AMAZING IS THIS??! Tarbut V’ Torah (TVT) Lower School just collected and donated 1,024 new books for ECBC! This is impressive for a school of any size, but TVT’s lower school has only 410 students! A ton of great books of every type — this will help us for months! TVT has always been our strongest school partner, donating 200 or more books every year since we started ECBC. But this year they knocked it out of the park! They beat their own school record from 2019 of 310 books, and they far exceeded their goal for this year of 350 books. They also almost doubled the school donation record across all school donors of 531 books!

THANK YOU TVT families for helping ECBC help hospitalized kids to thrive through treatment with books and reading. Congratulations to the 4th graders for collecting the most books and earning the ice cream party (which apparently the whole school now gets due to the generous cash kickback from Scholastic!)! And a very special thank you to the Diaz family for your super significant contribution!!!  Also thank you to the 4th/5th grade leadership class for your amazing efforts at rallying the school with your posters and videos — it is so exciting to hear that every kid got on board! And thank you to Galina and Hayley for all your help organizing the book drive. ECBC is so very grateful for our ongoing partnership with TVT!


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Thank you Jack & Jill Guild and Arvida Book Co!

A big thank you to the Jack & Jill Guild of CHOC Children’s Hospital for a successful “Happy Hour Book Drive” yesterday at Arvida. In just a couple of hours, many awesome new books were purchased and donated (number TBD, since many were ordered online), which will get delivered to patients over the next few weeks. ECBC so appreciates the Jack & Guild’s ongoing support! A special shout out to Hoppy Meyer for her work coordinating the event. And thank you to Arvida owners Sam and Mike for partnering with ECBC to help provide books for patients at CHOC!

Arvida collects book donations for ECBC on an ongoing basis, so please stop by the store if you can to purchase a new book to donate! It’s a huge win-win for all as you will also be supporting a truly awesome local Tustin independent bookstore with new and used books, a very cool coffee bar with terrific coffee, and cozy seating to hang and read and chat!

THANK YOU for your support in helping hospitalized kids to thrive through the holidays with books and reading!


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Outpatient Holiday Book Delivery!

Today, we delivered a TON (288, to be exact) of new December holiday-themed books to our mini-libraries at CHOC Children’s Outpatient Infusion (OPI) Center and CHOC’s Oncology Clinic! This allows all patients who visit the oncology clinic or OPI in the next few weeks to pick out a terrific holiday book — with choices ranging from lift-the-flap board books to Christmas- and other-holiday themed picture books to holiday-themed graphic novels, joke books, and chapter books for middle graders and teens/ young adults. We also re-stocked our inventory of Read Think Thrive Bags for kids who are diagnosed with cancer.

We are STILL in need of more holiday-themed books to be able to offer them to kids on the oncology and neurology floor on the inpatient side in the coming weeks! If you would like to donate a book, please CLICK HERE to access our amazon wish list. All books will be sent directly to ECBC, and bookplates will be added with donor names.

THANK YOU for helping hospitalized kids thrive through the holidays with books and reading!


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It’s Giving Tuesday! Please help!

In the spirit of #GivingTuseday and the upcoming holiday season, please consider purchasing a book from ECBC’s December holiday wish list (CLICK HERE). All books will go directly to hospitalized kids — who are either inpatient at CHOC, visiting the outpatient oncology clinic or the infusion center for chemo, or patients and siblings who are living at Miracle for Kids’ subsidized housing. Donate now and patients will start receiving holiday books next week! All books donated will be sent directly to ECBC and bookplated with donor name.


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Ethan speaks at TVT

Co-founder Ethan speaks at Tarbut v’ Torah’s (TVT) Lower School, where he shares his story of battling cancer and founding ECBC. This kicked off the book drive that TVT will host next week alongside their school book fair, where the 4th and 5th grade leadership class will try to rally the school to beat their 2019 record of 310 books. ECBC is so grateful for TVT’s annual support since 2016! 


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Thank you Orange Chamber of Commerce!

Thank you to the Orange Chamber of Commerce for conducting a Halloween book drive in the month of September, and of course thank you to everyone who contributed to it. They collected a terrific collection of 119 new Halloween-themed books, which gives us a great start towards the 600 books that we need for our BOO-ks for Treats Halloween event at CHOC Children’s Hospital. And a huge THANK YOU to Orange Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Elizabeth Holloman for all your work to organize and oversee the book drive — sharing the wish list, opening all the packages, bookplating with donor names; we appreciate your help so very much!!

If anyone didn’t get a chance to donate a Halloween book and would like to, we still need hundreds! You can select a book off our list and it will come directly to Ethan & Choco’s Book Club: https://a.co/8wsb23B


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Halloween Book Drive for CHOC Children’s Hospital!

It’s October, which means it’s time to turn to our Halloween book drive for our 6th annual BOO-ks for Treats event at CHOC Children’s Hospital. This is always a hard ask immediately after our BOOK IT fundraiser. However, this event has become a significant part of CHOC’s Halloween celebration, it is especially important to our founder Ethan, and the number of books that we need for it is quite hefty (approximately 600 new books). If you didn’t get a chance to donate to BOOK IT, please listen to Ethan’s video and consider purchasing a book or two from our Halloween-themed Amazon wish list. Especially since we only made it to halfway of our fundraising goal for BOOK IT, your help with this is even more important. Patients love getting high-quality Halloween themed books along with their usual candy and trinkets, so we absolutely LOVE being able to provide “literary candy” for the kids! All books purchased from this wish list will go directly to ECBC, and bookplates with donor names will go on every book. THANK YOU!

CLICK HERE FOR AMAZON WISH LIST LINK.


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THANK YOU Hicks Canyon!

THANK YOU Hicks Canyon Elementary families for the 83 books that you purchased for ECBC at your book fair this past week! We appreciate your support so much, and we can’t wait to get all these great books to patients at CHOC Children’s Hospital! A special shout out to Tina Jussal for your making this happen despite such short notice!


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THANK YOU Baum Squad!

A HUGE thank you to Baum Ortho for this amazing donation of 160 new books! Baum families who donated, you did a terrific job at picking out highly popular titles and so much variety — we received books in every book type category! We are so very grateful for ECBC’s ongoing partnership with Baum Ortho. It makes a big difference for us to have these awesome books coming in regularly, which go right to oncology and other patients at CHOC Children’s Hospital!


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THANK YOU Olga!

How awesome is this?! In honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and Hispanic Heritage Month, Olga Hernandez conducted a Spanish-language book drive amongst her family and friends. She just delivered 86 terrific new Spanish books, bookplated with her donors’ names and ready to be delivered to kids at CHOC! This is super helpful, as we are constantly in need of Spanish-language books, yet we rarely have any in our inventory. THANK YOU so very much, Olga! for taking this on and helping us in this much needed way! And thank you Fenny Meyling Kokenge for connecting ECBC with yet another amazing supporter!

Ogla’s helper Waffles signed the bookplates of anonymous donations!


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Outpatient Book Delivery Day!

Today was book re-stocking day at CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center as well as at the Oncology Clinic. We delivered 295 new books so that patients can continue to pick out a great book at every outpatient visit. Thanks to all of our donors who allow us to continue to support oncology kids’ thrivership with books and reading! To help ECBC fund next month’s delivery, please join in on our BOOK IT annual fundraiser and participate in the Run 5 Donate 5 Nominate 5 Challenge — link to learn more and donate is www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2022.


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THANK YOU to these amazing 7th graders!

A HUGE thank you to these eight (one is missing from photo) seventh graders at Grace Lutheran School in Huntington Beach for choosing ECBC for their service spring project for a second year in a row! They ran a terrific school-wide book drive, including hosting a book donation table for a week+ before and after school, making flyers and book collection boxes, creating their own promotional video/commercial to share online, and sorting/counting all of the books. In sum, they collected a total of 217 new books for kids of all ages, which is especially impressive given this school’s super small student population. Also, a huge shout out to Joi Vutpakdi for rallying the kids behind our cause as well as all of her work to help the kids make their book drive a success. And of course, thank you to all the Grace Lutheran families for all of your generous book donations. THANK YOU GRACE LUTHERAN!


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THANK YOU HEWES MIDDLE SCHOOL!

Thank you Hewes Highlanders for your wonderful donation of 235 books — which included books in every category that we need from board books and picture books to beginning readers and chapter books to nonfiction, graphic novels, novels for teens, poetry, and Spanish language books. A special shout out to Mrs Turner’s class for collecting the most books and winning the donut party!

It is worth noting that this is the FIRST book drive we’ve had in the seven years we’ve been doing this that the number of books that we count (and re-count) on our end is HIGHER than the number of books we were told by the group! Also, we only had to exclude ONE book that was clearly used, BY FAR the fewest % of used books we’ve received in a school donation. ASB, you must have done an awesome job communicating in your class presentations the importance of new books only!

THANK YOU Hewes Leadership class for organizing this effort, Mr. Jennings for rallying your class behind our cause and all your work behind the scenes, and the Hewes Community for helping ECBC to provide books and reading for Orange County’s hospitalized kids!


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THANK YOU KRISTIN AND STUDIO 17!

A HUGE thank you to Kristin Chahbazian/Studio 17 for her super generous donation to ECBC! Recently, Kristin hosted a book drive at her Tustin-based salon where she asked her clients to donate books in lieu of giving her a monetary tip. Her amazing clients donated a total of 91 new books — mostly all popular, high-interest titles! What an amazing way to inspire community to support our cause — by turning her usual monetary tips into books for kids at CHOC Children’s Hospital! We are so very grateful for Kristin’s philanthropic heart!


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MOST AWESOME School Donation To Date!

A HUGE thank you to Rossmoor Elementary School for donating 531 NEW BOOKS to Ethan & Choco’s Book Club! This terrific school has a Harry Potter style house system for Knights — where the four Knight houses are engaged in friendly competition in academic and non-academic areas throughout the year, including philanthropic support of the community. What a wonderful way to create school community and motivate students! ECBC was so fortunate to be the recipient of their most recent community outreach project, where donation boxes were put out at the school for each of the Knight houses, and students purchased books to contribute by either ordering off an ECBC-provided Amazon wish list or buying books at their school book fair. We are blown away by the response, which amounts to the largest single book donation from a school that we have received and will provide 2-3 months of books for our inpatient and outpatient programs at CHOC Children’s Hospital. Congrats to House of Lancelot for contributing the most books at more than 200 new books donated!

THANK YOU Rossmoor families for rallying behind our cause. Thank you also to Kristin Moushon for thinking of ECBC and connecting us with your school. And, a special thank you to Rossmoor Principal Amy Coltey for your commitment to making community outreach part of your school’s culture and for all you did to make this book drive a great success! Go Knights!


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THANK YOU ARROYO!

THANK YOU so much to Arroyo Elementary School for hosting a book drive for ECBC alongside your school book fair last week. And thank you to the Arroyo families who donated many awesome books!! all books will go directly to patients at CHOC Children’s Hospital who are battling cancer and other life-altering illnesses. A special shout out to Danielle Burton for coordinating the book drive!


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Stop by Arvida Book Co to donate a book!

We are so excited that the December holiday book drive at Arvida has turned into a regular thing! Arvida now has a book donation box for ECBC, so you can visit the store to purchase a children’s book to donate — as well as enjoy everything else the store has to offer, including a terrific selection of used and new adult books, locally made gifts and art , wonderful coffee, cozy seating and tables with chess games, and numerous in-person events such as book clubs and writers’ workshops. Purchasing a book here to donate is a win-win for ECBC, Arvida, CHOC Children’s Hospital, and our community! Bookplates are available at the store for donors to write in their name. Please remember that all books purchased for ECBC must be brand new!