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
Earlier this week we delivered a TON (421, to be exact) of new December holiday-themed books to our gifting libraries at CHOC Children’s Outpatient Infusion Center (OPI) and CHOC’s Oncology Clinic! This means that patients who visit the oncology clinic or OPI in the days leading up to Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza can choose to pick out a holiday book (as an alternative to the usual mainstream literature) — with an array of terrific titles for patients ranging from infants/toddlers to teen and young adults. THANK YOU to all who donated and helped Orange County’s hospitalized kids to thrive through the holidays with books and reading!
ECBC’s Bedside Readers commenced our holiday read-alouds at the start of the month, and today we loaded up our inpatient gifting cart with December holiday themed books to start our gifting on the inpatient side of the hospital…which will continue for the next couple of weeks up until Christmas. We also are handing out handwritten holiday cards made by high school students from Foothill, Beckman, and El Dorado High. It is such a joy to share high-quality holiday literature with patients of all ages, and we love having a variety of options for their diversity of reading interests!
If you’d like to help provide us with holiday books, please go to our wishlist at bit.ly/decemberholidaybooks . All books will be bookplated with donor names! #holidaybooks #literaryjoy #readingthroughtheholidays #readthinkthrive #thriveagainstncancer
Ethan & Choco’s Book Club was honored to be part of Miracles for Kids’ holiday party today for CHOC patients and families living at Miracle Manor (a home subsidized by Miracles for Kids for low-income CHOC families with critically ill children). ECBC Board member and bedside reader Susie provided a holiday-themed storytime for the kids and then passed out new, age-appropriate holiday books for all patients and siblings. All books were also packaged with handwritten holiday cards from local elementary and high school students — thank you to Tustin and Placentia students for providing such thoughtful cards. We love adding books and reading to these families’ holiday festivities (and how amazing that during the festivities, Miracles for Kids volunteers are busy decorating each of the family’s apartments for Christmas!). Thank you Miracles for Kids for letting ECBC participate in this event for our 6th consecutive year, thank you Susie for representing ECBC and delivering literary joy, and thank you to those who donated holiday-themed books for the kiddos!
If you haven’t had a chance to donate a holiday book, Ethan is still running our December holiday book drive. Click HERE 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!
On Monday we delivered several hundred December holiday-themed books to our outpatient libraries, and yesterday we filled up our Gifting Library Cart on the inpatient side at CHOC for kids who are stuck in the hospital over the holidays. We also added wonderful holiday books to each age category of our Read Aloud Wagons. Thank you to Bedside Readers Mary Kay and Suzanne for launching holiday storytimes in patient rooms yesterday! Patient favorite of the day: Tough Cookie: A Christmas Story (by Edward Hemingway).
We will continue to re-stock our gifting cart with holiday books for the month of December as long as we have inventory…but we will go through the books fast since the hospital is at full capacity. Please consider donating a book from our holiday wish list! Click HERE to access the list.
Ethan & Choco’s Book Club was so honored to be part of Miracles for Kids’ holiday party for CHOC patients and families living at Miracle Manor (a home subsidized by Miracles For Kids for low-income CHOC families with critically ill children). ECBC Board member and bedside reader Mary Kay provided an engaging holiday-themed storytime for the kids, and then along with Santa, Mary Kay passed out holiday book bags to all 33 patients and siblings living at Miracle Manor — with all bags containing two books curated by the age, gender, and interests of each child. We loved adding books and reading to these families’ holiday festivities (and how amazing that during the festivities, Miracles for Kids volunteers were busy decorating each of the family’s apartments for Christmas!). THANK YOU Miracles for Kids for letting Ethan & Choco’s Book Club participate in this magical event, thank you Mary Kay for making time to be there for the kids, and THANK YOU to all who donated holiday-themed books for the kiddos!
If you haven’t had a chance to donate a holiday book, ECBC is still running our December holiday book drive. Click HERE to donate.
ECBC was so thrilled to be able to deliver holiday book bags this week to CHOC patients and siblings living at Miracle Manor (Miracles for Kids’ subsidized housing for CHOC families). This was our third year gifting holiday books to Miracle Manor families, and while we missed not being able to host storytime with Santa or give the books to the kids directly, it is such a treat to be able to provide books that were curated according to every recipient’s specific age and interest. We gifted a Santa alphabet book, Christmas-themed princess books, holiday-themed popular graphic novels, JK Rowling’s new Christmas Pig and RIck Riordan’s newest book for a Percy Jackson fan, holiday drawing books, fancy encyclopedias about motorcross and Marvel Superheroes — and so much more! THANK YOU to all our holiday book donors, most of whom donate books on an ongoing basis which allows us to keep on helping hospitalized kids to thrive with books and reading!
Today, we delivered a TON (244, 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 as well as teens and 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!
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!
We just completed the last of our holiday book donations with these deliveries to CHOC inpatient oncology and neurology kids on the 5th floor as well as for CHOC’s outpatient oncology kiddos visiting the infusion center and the clinic. Three hundred wonderful holiday-themed books that will hopefully result in lots of reading and reading aloud! A huge thank you to all our amazing donors!
ECBC was so thrilled to deliver holiday book bags to CHOC patients and siblings living at Miracle Manor. This was our second year gifting holiday books to Miracle Manor families, and while we missed not being able to host story time with Santa like we did last year, it is such a treat to be able to provide books that were curated according every recipient’s specific interest. We gifted titles ranging from Mickey House and Baby Shark to baseball, gaming, and fashion — and so much more! A huge thank you to Mary Kay and Claire Viscounty for assembling the beautiful bags as well delivering the books today. And thank you to Janis Leach’s 3rd graders for writing personal holiday notes for every recipient! And of course thank you to all our donors, most of whom donate books on an ongoing basis which allows us to keep on helping hospitalized kids thrive with books and reading.
