Ethan & Choco’s Book Club had a great afternoon last Thursday at CHOC! We spent the first two hours in the hospital lobby for our Super Book Give-Away, where we teamed up with MaxLove Project’s BeSuper Party and hosted a book-inspired craft in honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month (theme color of gold). We read aloud the classic picture book Where the Wild Things Are, which features main character Max who wears a gold crown and has an imagination that leads him on a wild and brave adventure, reflecting MaxLove Project’s “B” in their BeSuper Action Plan (“Boost yourself with super thoughts”). Patients and SuperSibs crafted their own gold crowns and received their own new copy of the book, and they also selected one to several books to keep from ECBC’s Gifting Library Cart.
We had a ton of fun highlighting gold, reading, and therapeutic crafting with MaxLove!
In the latter part of the afternoon, ECBC’s bedside reading volunteers had a terrific couple of hours on the oncology/neurology floor. They read aloud to many patients (toddlers through 10 year olds), and gave away a good number of books to patients in isolation. A successful afternoon of books and reading — we can’t wait to expand to more days of the week, more volunteers, and more reading reaching more patients. 
ECBC had a great day today at CHOC! On the second floor lobby, we gave away about 70 books at our monthly Super Book Give-Away as part of MaxLove Project’s BeSuper Party and alongside Donovan’s Smile. On the Oncology/Neurology floor our expert Bedside Readers read aloud some great books in patient rooms ranging in age from infant through age 12. And we filled the Outpatient Infusion Center’s shelves with 75 new board books, beginning readers, picture books, and chapter books. So many books into patients’ hands today!! We’re giving away many books regularly and really need book donations!!
A HUGE thank you to our AWESOME community for joining us yesterday at ECBC’s inaugural charity run and book drive — BOOK IT! Racing for Reading for Hospitalized Kids! Nearly 500 racers (and nearly 600 people total including volunteers, sponsors, vendors, and supporters) came out to walk, run, fundraise, book-raise, and make our event an amazing success!
Thank you to Orange Coast College for providing us with a fantastic location for our event. Thank you to Barry Ackerman, Event Coordinator, who worked tirelessly on all aspects of the event and without whom BOOK IT! would not have been possible. My deepest thank you to our Title Sponsor, children’s author Alane Adams’ Rise Up Foundation, and to all of our sponsors and partners: Children’s Hospital of Orange County, MaxLove Project, Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation, American Academy of Pediatrics Orange County Chapter, Orange County Department of Education, Orange County Public Library Foundation, T-shirt sponsor Paris Family Trust, Kids READ!, Pakua Martial Arts, Orange County Children’s Book Festival, Scholastic Books, Erin Denes/Berkshire Hathaway Realtor, Adriene Madden/Magic Tree House, Saddleback Educational Books, and PJ Library. We couldn’t have pulled this off without all of our terrific event partners!
As of yesterday, ECBC has officially started our inpatient bedside reading and mobile book cart program at CHOC Children’s Hospital! It has been a long road to get here, but we are THRILLED to be able to finally bring books and reading to patients ON THE FLOORS (ie Oncology floor), not just in the lobby — reading aloud, using high-quality literature and trained “expert” readers, giving away books to patients in isolation via our new Gifting Library Cart, engaging patients in book-inpsired crafting, and getting patients excited to take a break from screentime! THANK YOU to Susie Alexander and Sandy Tweedt for helping to make our launch event so successful; I’m SO grateful to have such AMAZING volunteers! 
Ethan & Choco’s Book Club had a great time giving away books to oncology patients today at CHOC’s inpatient Cancer Survivors Day party! We got to use our Gifting Library Cart for the first time, and passed out everything from board books for toddlers to popular graphic novels for middle grade kids to romance and horror chapter books for teens. It was so fun to be on the giving end of things, especially on the oncology floor! 
ECBC had so much fun today with the MaxLove Project at the BeSuper Holiday Party at CHOC Children’s Hospital! Kids crafted ornaments, received toys from the amazing student veterans of Saddleback College, met children’s book author Alane Adams and received signed copies of her beautiful “Thief” picture books, and picked out holiday-themed books to keep! And afterwards, we delivered toys and holiday books to the Outpatient Infusion Center—their shelves are stocked with books again! Thank you Child Life at CHOC for hosting us — we are so honored to be able to give back and bring holiday cheer to hospitalized SuperKids! 
ECBC had so much fun at our Super Book Give-Away today with MaxLove Project at CHOC Children’s Hospital! Patients and Super Sibs crafted fall wreaths with MLP’s Camp Make & Believe, and they walked away with one to several new books. We also dropped off about 100 new books at the Outpatient Infusion Center, since their bookshelves are almost always empty (we just committed to doing a drop-off to OPI monthly). We’re so happy to be bringing books to patients regularly now! #ReadThinkThrive #HospitalizedKidsNeedBooksToo #BeSuper #ThriveAgainstCancer 
Ethan & Choco’s Book Club LOVED handing out Halloween books to patients today as part of CHOC’s annual trick-or-treating event! This event is amazing, roughly 200 booths all over the second floor of the hospital, and ECBC was the only booth giving books! We gave away about 300 terrific books to dressed-up patients of all ages — and kids, parents, and staff seemed thrilled! Thank you 
Ethan & Choco’s Book Club had the best time at the 
If you have some time this evening, please join us at 
We had so much fun at CHOC this afternoon with 
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!
Thank you Girl Scout Troop #3152 for teaming up with Ethan & Choco’s Book Club for your Bronze Award project!! This awesome troop is holding a book drive to benefit ECBC at Once Upon a Storybook this Sunday from 12:30-5:30. A portion of every book sale between these hours will go to ECBC if you mention Troop 3152 at checkout. Please come by to support the troop’s efforts, ECBC, and our wonderful local bookstore!!
Ethan had so much fun launching Ethan & Choco’s Book Club at CHOC Children’s Hospital yesterday! We had “Real Author Read Aloud” for around 2 hours and gave away approximately 250 books! Thank you MaxLove Project for letting us join your amazing Be Super Holiday Party, and thank you to Child Life at CHOC for hosting
ECBC had an amazing day yesterday at SOCO and The OC Mix in Costa Mesa! We crafted books with the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity and the MaxLove Project. Girl Scout Troop 3115, who is working on their Bronze Medal with ECBC, sold beautiful handmade ornaments and beanies to help fund Ethan’s Read+Think+Thrive Boxes. And with the help of Susie and Once Upon a Storybook, we collected many books for our library collection at CHOC Hospital. It was such a beautiful day in the courtyard at SOCO filled with lots of giving and love! Thank you everyone who participated for making this day a success. And thank you to our OC friends who came by — your support is always so appreciated! 
Since we launched fundraising efforts for Ethan & Choco’s Book Club in December 2015, we’ve been working hard to raise money, collect books, build awareness and make connections in Orange County, and coordinate plans for starting up in the hospital. Our first official ECBC event at CHOC is a launching party planned for December 9th, where we plan to give away new books, have a few local authors read aloud, and engage patients in book-related crafting. Our hope is that shortly thereafter, at the start of 2017, we will begin implementation of phase 1 in the hospital, which is “Reading Aloud in Every Room” — where trained volunteers will visit patient rooms to read aloud and promote literacy skills, conversations, and good thinking. After getting this initial phase off the ground, we hope to move quickly to phase 2, which will involve mobile book carts visiting patient rooms and the start of a Lending Library at CHOC. We are excited to finally be approaching a start date at CHOC!
Ethan unfortunately had to be admitted at CHOC on Tuesday due to a fever and critically low blood counts (his absolute neutrophil count is 0, meaning he has no ability to fight infection). It is his first time being inpatient since before we launched ECBC, and being here reminds him just how much books and reading are needed at the hospital. As always, he sees patients on screens and on devices — but it’s nearly impossible to see anyone with a book! While visiting the hospital radio station on Thursday (his favorite place to when he’s here), Ethan turned to me and said,”Mom, can I just do something for ECBC now, since I’m at the hospital anyway?” What a great idea — why not take advantage of us being here and get some books into kids’ hands, even if informal and impromptu?! So we made a plan with the radio station manager for Ethan to host a show, cleared it with Child Life, and I rushed home to get a pile of new books from our Gifting Library. And at 4:00 on Thursday, Ethan went on air at the hospital (which goes into patient rooms)!! He introduced himself and the mission of ECBC, read aloud two of his favorite books, and showed off book titles that he was giving away. About 15 kids ended up coming down to the station to choose books, and afterwards Ethan gave away another 15 books to oncology patients on the 5th floor. Ethan says “it was so awesome” to finally get to share his love of reading at CHOC, and he can’t wait to do more! Per the invitation of the radio station manager, it looks like a regular radio show hosted by Ethan is in the works!
We had such a great time at the Orange County Book Festival on Sunday! It was ECBC’s first time being at a public event (beyond our elementary school), and it was amazing to share what we are doing with other book-lovers and our broader Orange County community. We sold some merchandise and received some new book and cash donations, but more importantly we connected with a lot of people and spread awareness about our efforts to bring books to hospitalized kids! Ethan met numerous wonderful local authors who donated their own books, many of whom also expressed interest in being guest author readers at CHOC when we get things going there. Ethan had a blast presenting at the Storyteller’s Stage, where he shared his story and founding of ECBC with a captive audience of young readers and parents and then read aloud one of his favorite picture books. No shyness for this ambassador of reading — his only complaint was that he wanted a bigger stage and a bigger audience! And we were so excited to have a few girls from Girl Scout troop #3115 — who just joined forces with ECBC to help us collect books and other supplies for our new Read+Think+Thrive boxes (reading kits for kids battling cancer who can’t benefit from the hospital library because they are in isolation at CHOC or are at another hospital where they have limited access to books — more on this in another post!). Thank you, girls, for working so hard and collecting over 70 books for the reading kits! And, I think the best part of it all was watching Ethan sit front and center at the booth, proudly telling his story and sharing his cause to everyone who visited. I have no idea how he was able to do this tirelessly for 7 hours in the heat — a true sign of his tremendous commitment to this!
