Striving to make access to books and reading a core part of the care that SuperKids receive in the hospital, with the principal premise that literacy support for children fighting cancer and other life-threatening conditions can help promote cognitive development 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 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!
Yesterday we re-stocked our libraries at CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center and at the Oncology Clinic — 360 new books for patients of all ages to select every time they visit the hospital. THANK YOU so much to the handful of schools and local businesses that took the initiative to hold their own book drives. We wouldn’t be able to keep up with this volume of new book gifting without your support ($2000-$4000 value in books per month).
It’s book delivery day at CHOC Outpatient Infusion (OPI) Center and CHOC’s Oncology Clinic! We refilled our gifting libraries with approximately 300 new books for infants through teen/young adults, which included a ton of Halloween-theme books for kids who visit Oncology or OPI in the next week. We also re-stocked inventory of our Read + Think + Thrive Bags for kids newly diagnosed with cancer (which amount to too many diagnoses this month). And, we’re looking forward to our large Halloween book delivery for CHOC’s reverse trick or treating event next week! If you want to get in a last minute donation, you can do so by clicking HERE.
Today was book re-stocking day at CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center and at the Oncology Clinic. We delivered 200 new books to be offered to oncology kiddos whenever they visit the hospital for a chemo infusion or for a check-up. We also delivered 19 of our Read+Think+Thrive Bags, which contain ten new books and art supplies and are delivered to all kids soon after they are diagnosed with cancer.
If you haven’t yet had a chance to donate to BOOK IT 2021, our annual fundraiser, please consider doing so now and helping us fund these book bags as well as other ECBC programs — runsignup.com/BOOKIT2021. 120-150 kids are diagnosed with cancer at CHOC per year, and we are hoping to continue to get book bags to every one! If you would prefer to donate a book, you can do so using this link to our BOOK IT 2021 Amazon Wish List: https://a.co/dgc3bwV. Thank you!
CHOC Outpatient Infusion Center and Oncology Clinic book re-stocking day! 200 new books to be offered to oncology kiddos whenever they are visiting the hospital for a a chemo infusion or check-up. PLEASE help us to sustain this and other ECBC book and reading programs at CHOC by supporting our annual fundraiser — this year online only, at www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2021
Today was book delivery day for ECBC at CHOC Outpatient Oncology — we re-stocked our library cart at the Outpatient Infusion Center, re-filled bookshelves at the Oncology Clinic, and replenished inventory of Read Think Thrive Bags for new cancer diagnoses. Cancer diagnoses are WAY up right now, especially among teens. Which I hate hearing so much. But i love that through ECBC we can help kids thrive through treatment by gifting them a mini library of wonderful new books.
Our regular book donations to ECBC have all but stopped, with nothing coming in from school book fairs or community events. To help us sustain our book gifting programs, please CLICK HERE to make a cash donation or click on these links to donate a book from our Amazon Wish Lists: Board books, Spanish books, all types of books.
This week ECBC delivered our first books of the year, 360 of them — 168 books to re-stock our library cart at the Outpatient Infusion Center and 192 books to fill up our newly established Gifting Library at CHOC’s outpatient oncology clinic. Now, every child visiting CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center and the Oncology Clinic will be offered a new, high-quality and age-appropriate book at their visits.
The cost to replenish these gifting libraries is about $3000/month, which we hope we can sustain but depend 100% on donations in order to do so. To help with a monetary donation, click here. Currently, we are lowest on board books and Spanish books, with no backup supply at all. To donate either of these types of books, click here (board books) and here (Spanish). We also are very low on information/fact books (click here to purchase off the wish list), graphic novels (click here), and teen/young adult books (click here).
Thank you for helping kids thrive through treatment with high-quality books and reading!
Outpatient gifting cart
Gifting library at CHOC ‘s oncology clinic
Just a little glimpse of the pre-work leading up to a delivery — with no onsite book storage, books are stamped, sorted, and transported prior to each hospital delivery.
CHOC delivery day! We re-stocked our outpatient oncology library cart with 150 new books, and we replenished the inventory of Read Think Thrive Bags for kids newly diagnosed with cancer. We also got to fulfill of a 15 year old’s personal request for a nonfiction book about horses. ECBC volunteers still can’t enter the hospital and we sure do miss bedside reading —but we’re grateful that outpatient nursing and staff are helping us to help kids thrive through treatment with high quality books! As a small side note, two weeks ago we delivered a specific chapter book series for a nine year old oncology patient by personal request, and I learned today that upon receiving the books she showed off her first smile at the infusion center ever.
ECBC’s new mobile COOL (CHOC Oncology Outpatient Library) Cart has been wheeled around to patients visiting CHOC OPI for infusions for about two weeks now, and today I had the pleasure of re-stocking the cart with a whole bunch of awesome kid lit, including about 50% Halloween books (ranging from board books to young adult horror and everything in between). I also replenished the supply of our book bags for kids who are diagnosed with cancer —too many kids are being diagnosed right now. And I got to fulfill an individual request for a specific book series—the patient didn’t want any of the 250 books on the cart, only Mercy Watson chapter books (she has good tastes, as this is a terrific easy chapter book series). Gifting high-quality books to kids who wouldn’t otherwise have access to them truly brings me so much joy.
WOOHOO! I am so excited about today’s delivery to CHOC Children’s Hospital and ECBC’s re-launching of several of our book/reading programs after a six month hiatus (since all of our programs have been on hold because they have depended on volunteers). Now, thanks to CHOC’s awesome outpatient oncology nurse manager Ali Langdon and staff who are willing to store, manage, and deliver books for us, we can get books into patients’ hands in Covid-safe ways! Today, we dropped off the first installment of our Read Think Thrive Book Bags to be given to kids as they are diagnosed with cancer This is the first time we’ve been able to store these bags on site, and so it will be the first time we will actually be able to get the bags to all kids as they are diagnosed (a Covid-inspired improvement!). Additionally, today we also delivered supplies to start offering a brand new program for teen cancer warriors and survivors — a virtual book club (called Teens Thrive Reading Group and curated by ECBC now-teen co-founder Ethan) that includes gifting teens who want to participate with a new Kindle and monthly e-books. We can’t wait to grow this club into a safe space for teens to share their thoughts about both literary and personal stories! Finally, we created and delivered our new CHOC Oncology Outpatient Library (COOL) Cart filled with 250 curated books organized by book type, to be wheeled to patients’ rooms (oncology patients and kids with other chronic illnesses) while they are receiving infusions at CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center (OPI). In the past, ECBC’s book deliveries to OPI went on open shelves for patients to grab. With this new Covid-safe method, nurses will offer books personally to every patient/caregiver, encouraging them to take a break from screens and other activities to do a bit of reading/reading aloud.
Which gets me to the 29th (of 30) way that ECBC has helped hospitalized kids thrive — through providing books to kids at their OPI visits — now in a way that is much more personal and will result in significantly more books being gifted than before (there are 150 patient visits to OPI per week!). If you haven’t yet supported BOOK IT (which ends tomorrow) and would like to donate to help fund and sustain the OPI book cart, please go to runsignup.com/BOOKIT2020: $10 provides one book for the cart, $50 provides five books, $1000 provides one shelf of books; and $2500 re-stocks the entire cart (which will last approximately 1-3 weeks). We need your help more than ever, especially since we are not receiving any help from school book fairs and book drives which typically have provided most of our gifting library books! THANK YOU for supporting BOOK IT, ECBC’s new and re-launched programs, and helping to honor cancer warriors during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month!
