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
It was so wonderful to celebrate ECBC’s outstanding group of bedside readers at our CHOC volunteer thank you dinner last night. I feel so blessed to have had such amazing team — current and retired educators, reading experts, psychologists, and librarians — who did the work of our mission in the best way possible. Together, they engaged patients in thousands of hours of bedside read-alouds and gifted tens of thousands of high-quality books. Together, they were able to yield an impressive 70% “yes to reading” rate by patients — 7 out of 10 kiddos saying yes to a read-aloud — which far surpassed the expectations we had at the launching of the program. And more than half of teens and young adults agreed to a read-aloud, truly astounding for this demographic! These impact numbers are incredible and are a testament to the passion and commitment of our volunteers. I am so grateful for this team and will miss them dearly!
One thing that became clear as this group reflected on their time at CHOC is that impact did not only go in the direction of volunteer to patient. The volunteers all shared stories about how the experience of being a bedside reader impacted them personally and added meaning to their life. What an incredibly special thing to hear as we said goodbye!
Thank you Arvida Book Co and Arvida Foundation, and Sam, for making the process of dissolving ECBC (and moving thousands of books) do-able and surprisingly easy. We are so grateful for you. Storage unit cleared — step 1 of book transport done. Next up — my living room and our friend’s warehouse. Dave and Josh, you were life savors today! And Susie, a life savor always. Thank you Arvida!
Today, ECBC closed the chapter on its inpatient literacy programming at CHOC Children’s Hospital, with two of our loyal retired educator volunteers completing the last of 1124 volunteer shifts and tens of thousands of books gifted on the inpatient side of the hospital over the past decade. Per ECBC’s usual routine, today’s volunteers started with the mobile gifting cart, giving away a bunch of terrific books to kids in isolation who are stuck in their rooms, followed by visiting non-isolation patient rooms with ECBC’s Read-Aloud Wagons and offering Halloween-themed storytime at patients’ bedside.
At the end of the shift, as bedside reading supplies were being cleared out of the storage cabinets, a mom and her teenage oncology patient daughter entered the room, asking how they can get a book and what days the book cart visits patient rooms. As I explained that this was ECBC’s last day of this program, it was tough to get their disappointed response– the teen loved books, “especially comic style”. I offered her to pick some books from the cart to keep, and she excitedly chose two graphic novels written for teens/young adults…she was grateful and left the room smiling. This program is difficult to say goodbye to because I so deeply know (from first-hand experience and scientifically) how valuable high-quality interactive read-alouds and high-quality literature is for patients, especially those stuck in the hospital with long-term stays. One of my very greatest joys is sharing quality and compelling books with kids, especially kiddos who wouldn’t otherwise have access to them. I will certainly miss being able to do this.
And tomorrow, we turn to ECBC’s BOO-ks for Treats at CHOC’s Halloween event — our very last ECBC event.
After much contemplation and discussion, the board of ECBC has made the difficult decision to dissolve Ethan & Choco’s Book Club. Over the past ten years, ECBC has helped patients thrive through treatment at CHOC Children’s Hospital, with both inpatient and outpatient literacy and book gifting programs. Our bedside readers have faithfully read to thousands of patients, and we have donated tens of thousands of new, high-quality books to cancer warriors and other patients — specially curating the books to meet the diverse needs and interests of patients of all ages infant through young adult. We hope we have made their difficult life circumstances more bearable and enriched their cognitive health with support for literacy and thinking skills that is so often missing from hospitalized children’s experiences. We are thankful we had the opportunity for a full decade of impact on the lives of patients and their families at CHOC Children’s Hospital.
Despite our robust literacy programs at CHOC, the Outpatient Infusion Center, and the Hyundai Cancer Institute clinic, we have been faced with rising costs and significant obstacles at the hospital that have prevented us from fully fulfilling our mission. During the past two years, we have been unsuccessful in securing ongoing funding to support our program needs, maintaining engagement for our work in our online audience, as well as growing our board in the way that is necessary for a nonprofit to function. Also, as our co-founder, Ethan, has embarked on his college adventure at Duke University, his participation in the organization has become more challenging. In the past year and a half, the work of running the organization has been delegated to just a couple of people. Given these challenges, now seems like a logical time to bid farewell.
It takes a community to make a nonprofit successful, and your faithful participation was such a blessing to us! We were always encouraged by your loyalty to ECBC and loved doing social media and newsletter shout-outs to thank you for your incredible support. You donated books, hosted your own book drives, “ran for reading”, dressed up as your favorite literary character, recruited event sponsors, held birthday and memorial parties asking for books instead of gifts or flowers, rallied youth groups around our cause and made thousands of support materials (e.g. custom book marks and holiday cards), and as you shared the work of ECBC, it brought in new supporters. Your impact was significant and meaningful, and it kept us going for many years!
October will be our final month of literacy programming – with Halloween-themed bedside reading and book gifting both inpatient and at the outpatient centers. Our final day at CHOC will be Friday, Oct. 31, for BOO-ks for Treats, our annual event where we give away hundreds of Halloween books to children hospitalized at CHOC. This is a fitting way to go out, as Halloween was Ethan’s first event at CHOC – he dressed up in costume and trick-or-treated on the same day that he started chemo! Ethan will soon be sharing a video asking for one last book donation in order to support this event.
Thank you, ECBC community, from the bottom of my heart for sticking with us for so long and allowing us to spend a decade helping hospitalized kids to thrive through books and literacy experiences.
The time has come for Ethan to close the chapter on Teens Thrive Reading Group (TTRG), his virtual book club for teen oncology patients and survivors. Here are the brief words that he shared with his private Instagram-based group a few days ago.
From Ethan: “After nearly four and a half years, and now that I am headed off to college, I am sad to say that I am shutting down Teens Thrive Reading Group. First and foremost, thank you to everyone for participating. Throughout cancer treatment, reading was extremely important to me. But it has remained an important part of my life long beyond that, providing an escape from the world and a window into new ones that social media or YouTube could never replicate. If there is one thing you got from this club—whether you read one book or many—I hope you will continue to make reading a part of your life as well. To honor the end of this club, we are offering everyone a free book of your choice. DM us which one you’d like. Later 👋”
Ethan launched TTRG in September 2020 to appeal to teenage and young adult patients at CHOC, especially those who may be interested in a literature-based activity but who may not be excited by the read-alouds provided by our bedside readers. He ran it for 51 consecutive months, selecting 51 featured books of the month that participants could receive for free (along with free Kindles) and curating 51 book discussions. It has been a good run, until recently when most members have grown up and grown out of the group (and survived cancer!)…with Ethan off to college, it is time to move on. After Ethan’s goodbye message to the group, one member wrote” ” Thank you for keeping this group going for as long as it did. It certainly made our days a lot more enjoyable”. We thank our initial funders of this program — Rexford Industrial, Mark Latimer/the Larry and Helen Hoag Foundation, and John and Kathleen Collins — and all the donors along the way, for making it possible for ECBC to offer this program for the past 4+ years.
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 — especially since this year we couldn’t hold our in-person annual charity run and consequently raised only about half of the funds we need to cover program and operational expenses. 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 HERE to donate.
This morning, co-founder Ethan attended Tustin Kiwanis Club’s Friday Meeting in order to receive an award for “outstanding academic achievement, positive impact on the community, and academic character”. In an opportunity to speak after receiving the award, Ethan shared his founding story and about ECBC’s mission, programs, and volume of book gifting. Ethan also gave a plug for our current annual fundraiser … which resulted in hundreds of dollars being donated on the spot! Thank you Kiwanis Club members, and especially Tim O’Donuhue for following up on Ethan’s speech with a commitment to donate and challenging fellow members to do the same!
Presenting at a Kiwanis Club meeting was one of Ethan’s first community presentations to garner support for our cause nearly nine years ago…it’s amazing to see him still going at it as he’s gearing up to finish high school and head to college!
ECBC had a terrific day yesterday at the OC Book Fair in Old Town Tustin, hosted by the Tustin Literary Foundation and Arvida Book Co. This inaugural event included indie bookstores, publishers, local nonprofits, food trucks, and a fantastic turnout of hundreds of literature enthusiasts. We had an impressive number of people stop by the ECBC booth — and most seemed genuinely interested in learning about our cause. We didn’t collect many books, but we did lots of sharing about our programs, engaged many kids in writing personal Care Cards for the cancer warriors who receive our new diagnosis book bags, and ended up with a long list of names of people who are interested in becoming a bedside reader at CHOC. And, Ethan enjoyed kicking off the day on stage by reading aloud a story and sharing about ECBC with the audience. Thank you to Leah of Alternating Current Press for her generous donation of poetry and short fiction for our teens and young adult patients, and we so appreciate our amazing bedside readers Theresa, Derek, and Joy for joining us to help run our booth. And a big thank you to Arvida owners Sam and Mike for inviting ECBC to be part of this special day. It’s so fun to see our community gather and connect around all things bookish, while supporting local businesses as well! We look forward to being back next year!
Here’s what it looks like when ECBC puts together Read Think Thrive Bags for newly diagnosed cancer patients at CHOC. Each gorgeous canvas bag is filled with 10 amazing age-appropriate books, art supplies, book crafting supplies (blank books, blank comic books), “care cards” from kids in the community, and information about Ethan & Choco’s Book Club. These bags are one way that ECBC helps to engage patients’ minds so they can thrive during treatment. If you are interested in learning more about getting involved in ECBC as a bedside reader, board member, sponsor, or volunteer at events like these, please e-mail us at Ali@ECbookclub.com and we will get you the info you need to make an impact with hospitalized kids. Thank you Board of Directors member Susie and lead volunteer Anne for your hard work in coordinating this packaging day, and thank yo to our amazing volunteers for helping! #megabagpackaging day #readthinkthrive #thriveagainstcancer
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.
In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, and along with our usual bedside reading and book give-aways, this week we delivered Valentine cards made by local high school students that shared “love of reading” messages with CHOC patients. THANK YOU to Foothill High School ECBC club for making these beautiful cards at your last club meeting — the patients loved getting personalized cards written by high schoolers!
2022 was productive and impactful for ECBC! We finally returned to pre-Covid levels of programming, and we far surpassed prior years’ book gifting levels — giving away 400-500 new books per month between our outpatient and inpatient gifting libraries. At the end of 2021 we were given the green light to resume our inpatient bedside reading and mobile book cart program (which had been on halt since the start of Covid), and in 2022 we were given an additional day, so our bedside readers are now reading and gifting books in patient rooms two days per week. Our amazing group of volunteer bedside readers is growing (now at 14) — passionate about kids’ literacy/literature, they provide high-quality interactive read -alouds for patients of all ages that are also often kids’ only non-medical related conversations of the day. We gave a Read Think Thrive Bag to every child at CHOC as they were diagnosed with cancer — which was a hefty commitment this year given that the cancer diagnosis rate was the highest in the history of the hospital (we gifted 10-15 book bags per month, valued at $150 per bag). We continued to give away large numbers of holiday-themed books for various holidays, and we enjoyed returning to Miracle Manor (Miracles for Kids’ subsidized housing for CHOC families) to provide Christmas storytime for patients and siblings. And, we continued to provide free Kindles and Kindle books for teen and young adult cancer patients in our virtual book club, with book selections and discussion curated by ECBC co-founder Ethan. Despite not being able to hold our in-person annual fundraiser for a third consecutive year, we raised enough funds via our virtual BOOK IT to sustain our programming (though not enough to grow in order to meet increasing demands and costs). THANK YOU to our amazing community for supporting ECBC — every monetary donation, book donation, book drive, and social medial shout-out has mattered and allows ECBC to keep on going. And a special thank you to ECBC’s Board of Directors — Susie Alexander, Sandy Tweedy, Craig Bryson, Fenny Kokenge, Mary Kay Viscounty, Anne Case, and Dr. Van Huynh — I am deeply grateful for the commitment and contributions of each of you.
Going forward in 2023, 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 diagnsoed with cancer. We hope to someday be able to exapnd beyond CHOC to provide our RTT Bags to additional kids who are diagnosed with cancer — though this is likely a more distant goal given the significant additional funds and storage space that would be required for more inventory.
Recruiting more teens and young adults to join Teens Thrive Reading Group (TTRG), our virtual book club for teen cancer warriors that includes gifting Kindles and monthly Kindle books to participants. As this is a virtual program that is not hospital or storage space dependent, we hope to expand TTRG beyond CHOC to include oncology teens from around the country.
Expanding our 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.
Bringing our annual fundraiser (BOOK IT!) back to an in-person run/walk and book drive! This is risky for our tiny nonprofit given the significant upfront costs of hosting an in-person event; however, we need to raise more funds than we can virtually. We are currently seeking event sponsors at all levels — email ali@ecbookclub.com if interested. Please save the date — Labor Day, Monday September 4 2023!
Obtaining office/storage space! We have spent the past 6+ years with a small offsite storage unit and using our founder’s house as the main source of our storage. As we grow our organization, we are in great need of a single space for storage and our volunteer activities (like filling the canvas bags for new diagnoses or sorting and stamping the hundreds of books that we gift each month). As we have a very limited budget, we are looking for an ECBC benefactor who could support us with donating space or finances that would allow us to get a space. We’re hopeful that we can make this happen in 2023!
To start off 2023 with a one-time or recurring monetary donation, please CLICK HERE.
Thank you for helping ECBC help Orange County’s hospitalized kids to thrive with high-quality books and reading experiences!
If you haven’t donated to Ethan & Choco’s Book Club yet this year and are looking to make an end-of-year gift before January 1, you can still do so now! CHOC Children’s is beyond full capacity with playrooms and other social spaces converted to patient rooms; cancer diagnoses are at an all-time high for the hospital; and most of ECBC’s programs have returned to or surpassed their pre-Covid levels of operation — so donations are greatly needed to meet the 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. All donations are tax-deductible, and donors are acknowledged on the items they fund. You can CLICK HERE to donate: Please email Ali@ECbookclub.com for a donation receipt.
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!
We had so much fun this morning at Tiddlywinks in the Orange Circle, where Ethan led a storytime along with The Potting Shed owner Jack! Thank you to the kiddos (and their parents and grandparents) who attended, and THANK YOU to Tiddlywinks owner Jeannie for inviting Ethan to read. Tiddlywinks is hosting a book drive for ECBC for the month of August, so if you’re in the area, please consider stopping by this wonderful toy (+book) store to purchase a children’s book to donate!
Today we re-stocked our mini-libraries at CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center (OPI) and CHOC’s Oncology Clinic. 215 new, high-quality books for patients of all ages were delivered, so that patients can select a book to read when they visit for a chemo infusion or other oncology care. Also, we brought sixteen more Read Think Thrive Bags which are delivered to kids as they are diagnosed with cancer (valued at ~$150 per bag) — which means many new diagnoses the past few weeks. Since these bags contain enough books to take kids through the initial months of diagnosis (+ art supplies and a “Read Think Thrive Challenge” from Ethan), we are grateful that ECBC can support kids’ cognitive health and thrivership during a time where this critical aspect of their development is so often neglected.
If you’d like to help ECBC sustain these book gifting programs, you can:
Visit Arvida Book Coin Old Towne Tustin to purhcase a book to donate (they have a box for donations)
Purchase a book from ECBC’s wish list on Amazon. All books purchased from this list will be sent directly to ECBC and bookplated with donor name: CLICK HERE.
Make a monetary donation that will go directly toward purchasing needed books for patients at CHOC Children’s Hospital (mostly oncology and neurology patients, as well as others battling life-altering illness). CLICK HERE.
THANK YOU for helping ECBC help hospitalized kids to thrive with the help of books and reading!
Today we re-stocked our mini libraries at CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center and the Oncology Clinic — 310 new books for infants through young adults.
We rarely get to see the recipients of the books on the outpatient side of the hospital, so we really appreciate it when we receive pictures like this. This awesome Leukemia warrior William’s favorite part about visiting OPI is to receive a book at each visit. Keeping reading and thriving through treatment William!
To donate a book for our inpatient and outpatient book gifting at CHOC, please CLICK HERE. All books donated will be bookplated with donor name.
Despite the continued challenges of these extraordinary times, including not being able to have our annual in-person fundraiser for a second year, we were able to support ECBC’s mission in many ways in 2021. We built our oncology outpatient book gifting programs to be stronger than ever, giving away 200-300 books per month. We finally figured out how to successfully give a Read Think Thrive Bag to every child at CHOC as they are diagnosed with cancer — which amounted to 180 new diagnoses and bags delivered in 2021 (valued at $120-$150/bag). We continued to give away holiday-themed books for Halloween and December-themed holidays, although book delivery still looked different per Covid-altered protocol. Additionally, we launched our new virtual book club for teen cancer patients and survivors, with book selections and discussion curated by ECBC co-founder Ethan. AND, the best news of all is that we were one of few volunteer programs to be given the green light to resume our inpatient volunteer-dependent bedside reading and mobile book cart program as of this past October. It has been so great to be back reading aloud and book talking with the kids at CHOC!
Going forward in 2022, ECBC plans to continue to promote hospitalized kids’ cognitive health and thrivership by:
Re-building and growing our inpatient reading programs to more expert reader volunteers, more days per week, more patient floors, and greater impact on kids’ thrivership during their hospital stays.
Sustaining our various book gifting programs — including our Read Think Thrive Bags for patients as they are diagnosed with cancer; our gifting libraries at CHOC’s Oncology Clinic and the Outpatient Infusion Center so that every child visiting the clinic or OPI can select a high-quality book to keep; and our holiday book gifting such as BOO-ks for Treats at Halloween and our December holiday book gifting.
Recruiting more teens and young adults to join Teens Thrive Reading Group (TTRG), our new virtual book club for teen cancer warriors that includes gifting Kindles and monthly Kindle books to participants. As this is a virtual program that is not hospital dependent, we are hoping to expand TTRG beyond CHOC to include oncology teens from around the country.
Developing ways to provide parents with information and resources to help them optimally support their kids’ cognitive health and thrivership 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.
Bringing our annual fundraiser (BOOK IT!) back to an in-person charity run/walk and book drive! Our fingers are crossed hard that we can host our onsite event this year — which raises the majority of the funds that we need to run our programs. Please save the date — Labor Day, Monday September 5 2022!
Thank you to our awesome bedside readers who are back at it despite the challenges that come with visiting a children’s hospital in the middle of a pandemic. And a special thank you to ECBC’s Board of Directors — I am deeply grateful for the commitment and contributions of each of you. And a HUGE thank you to our amazing community for supporting ECBC during this especially difficult time — every monetary donation, book donation, book drive, and social media shout-out has mattered and we are deeply grateful.
To start off 2022 with a one-time or recurring monetary donation, please CLICK HERE.
If you haven’t donated to Ethan & Choco’s Book Club yet this year and are looking to make an end-of-year gift before January 1, you can still do so now! Most of ECBC’s programs have returned do their pre-Covid levels of operation, and 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, it may buy a book for a child who is inpatient on the oncology floor; or it may provide a book bag containing a mini-library of age and gender appropriate literature for a child just recently diagnosed with cancer; or it may fund a Kindle and Kindle books for a teenage oncology warrior. All donations are tax-dedictible, and donors are acknowledged on the items they fund. You can CLICK HERE to donate: Please email Ali@ECbookclub.com for a donation receipt. #endofyeargift #ECBC #readthinkthrive #thriveagainstcancer #cognitivehealth
With the start of December, ECBC began our holiday-themed book gifting to kids who are on the inpatient side of the hospital at CHOC. ECBC volunteers are wheeling around our gifting library cart (see below) to offer patients age-appropriate Christmas and other December holiday themed books — from Christmas-themed board books, picture books, joke books and graphic novels to contemporary holiday-themed fiction for teens and young adults. Since our volunteers were not allowed in the hospital last year due to COVID restrictions, we weren’t able to personally deliver any books to kids on the inpatient side. It’s so wonderful to be back to offering the kids choice and variety, which let’s them select based on their needs and interests!
We have enough holiday books to get us through this week, but we still need many more (for all book types and ages) to get us through the month and to also to give to kids who visit Outpatient Oncology, the Outpatient Infusion Center, and kids living at Miracle Manor (Miracles for Kids’ subsidized housing for CHOC families). To donate, please visit our December holiday wish list on Amazon by CLICKING HERE. You can also donate a new holiday book by visiting Arvida Book Co in Tustin and buying a book to put in their donation box.
THANK YOU for helping ECBC to help hospitalized kids thrive through the holidays with books and reading!
