ECBC had a terrific afternoon yesterday at CHOC, with two of our programs going on at the same time and with such a good response. On the 5th floor (oncology/neurology), our bedside readers visited patient rooms with the Read-Aloud Wagon and read aloud with almost every available patient on the floor. We received so many more “YES”s to reading than we anticipated! And on the hospital lobby, ECBC gave away many books off our Gifting Library Cart to patients and siblings who came down for MaxLove’s Be Super Party (see photo — unfortunately we can’t share pics of patients). It has been a wonderful first four weeks since launching our program — so rewarding to see plans in action, to see books becoming part of patients hospital experience!
Category Archives: MaxLove Project
Thank You CarterStrong Community for your Incredible Donation
Please check out Ethan’s video thanking the CarterStrong community and the CarterStrong Bucket List Book Drive for their amazing donation of 665 new books for ECBC and hospitalized kids at CHOC Children’s Hospital! ECBC is so honored to get to have a part in carrying on Carter’s legacy with this remarkable donation as well as with the special CarterStrongForever Legacy Collection that will forever be a part of the library at CHOC. The library will be CarterStrong FOREVER!! 
Ethan’s November Title Talk (and October Thank-You’s)
Here’s Ethan’s November 2017 Title Talk (#11)*, the list of books he hopes will be donated in the month of November! Please donate hardcover (for the permanent Lending Library) or paperback (for the Gifting Library) versions of these books, or any new book, from ECBC’s Amazon Wish List and help us build a library at CHOC Children’s Hospital! Books will be sent directly to ECBC. The link to the wish list is: https://amzn.com/w/BLD7UEVPPPO.
If you want to donate a holiday-themed book for our December book give-away event or to help us create a holiday collection in our lending library, please click on this link to access that list: http://a.co/bNrSjSD.
In this video, we also thank all of our October donors. We had such an AWESOME month of book donations in the month of October, and we appreciate everyone’s support so much. We couldn’t list everyone’s name, because we had donations from approximately 200 different individuals — WOW! These donations made our Books for Treats event at CHOC such a great success, and they also started a fantastic collection of Halloween books in our Lending Library!!
Thank you so much to our donors for continuing to keep the book donations coming!
Click here for Ethan’s November Title Talk video.
Click here to purchase books to donate off our Amazon Wish List.
Click here to purchase books to donate off our Amazon HOLIDAY Book Wish List.
*Ethan’s sister Maddy helped out this time, since Ethan’s wasn’t feeling good.
ECBC’s Books for Treats at CHOC Children’s was a Success!
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 MaxLove Project for being there and for handing out Dr. Johns sugar free candies!! We are so proud to be offering healthier treats! And a super thank you to Arroyo Elementary School, NLYM Tustin 2020, Once Upon a Storybook, Tod and Sharon Paris, Ashley Hemphill Netsky, Rob and Brooke Lieberman, the Stahl Family, the Adzich family, and the MANY many individual donors who made our first Books for Treats booth a success! 
Please help us collect a few more books for Ethan’s Halloween Book Drive!
Orange County – This is the LAST WEEK of Ethan’s Halloween book drive for ECBC’s Books for Treats event on Halloween at CHOC Children’s Hospital! If you haven’t donated yet, please consider donating a new Halloween book to help us get to our goal of 300 books so kids who are inpatient on Halloween can trick-or-treat for books! Ways to donate are (1) visit Once Upon a Storybook and purchase a book to add to our donation box at the store, (2) put a new book in ECBC’s large donation box by the front office at Arroyo Elementary School, and (3) visit our Halloween Book Drive wish list on Amazon at http://a.co/1o8eo3B to buy a book that is sent directly to ECBC. Thank you so much for your support!
Ethan’s Halloween Book Drive
Please help Ethan collect Halloween-themed books for kids are inpatient CHOC Children’s Hospital during Halloween! Every year CHOC holds an awesome trick-or-treating event for patients and siblings, and this year ECBC is hosting “Books for Treats” — our own booth where we will give away Halloween books! There are several ways you can help, including:
- Purchasing books off our Halloween Book Wish List on Amazon.com. Click here to access it.
- Visiting Once Upon a Storybook in Tustin, where you can purchase Halloween books to put in our donation basket at the store.
- Bring books to Arroyo Elementary to put in ECBC’s book donation box.
- Visit the Arroyo book fair and purchase/donate Halloween-themed books there.
Remember, all books must be brand new. 
Check out Ethan’s video to learn more. If you haven’t supported ECBC in a while, this is a great one to jump in on because it has special meaning to Ethan (see video) and it comes at the three year anniversary of his diagnosis.
Ethan’s September Title Talk (and August Thank-Yous)
September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month! In honor of Ethan and his efforts to help kids thrive through treatment by creating a reading program and library at CHOC Children’s Library, please consider donating a special book or two! In this video, Ethan mentions why childhood cancer awareness month is so important, and he provides the list of ten books that he hopes are donated in the month of September. Please consider donating! You can do so by clicking on the link to ECBC’s Amazon Wish list which sends books directly to ECBC (click here), or by visiting Once Upon a Storybook in Tustin, which collects books that customers purchase to donate to ECBC. We need hardcover (for the permanent lending library) and paperback (for the Gifting Library for kids in isolation and for give-away events) versions of every book!
Thank you all so much for your donations! We’re starting to get more books into the hands of patients, so we need the books to keep on coming!!
Click here for Ethan’s September Title Talk video.
Click here to purchase books to donate off our Amazon Wish List.
Another Fun Super Book Give-Away at CHOC Children’s Hospital!
We had so much fun at CHOC this afternoon with MaxLove Project and Donovan’s Smile! So many patients came down today — to choose an awesome backpack filled with supplies (Donovan’s Smile), to craft a pencil case (MaxLove Project…AND to select a book to keep! We passed out about 85 books to patients and siblings, with gifted books ranging from board books for toddlers to longer chapter for middle schoolers and high schoolers. We also had children’s author @Alane Adams join us, who gave away signed copies of both her thief picture books as well as her Legends of Orkney chapter book series. A parent of a four-year-old whose son had just been diagnosed four days ago shared that they had no books in their room on the oncology floor — she seemed so genuinely grateful to receive a stack from ECBC to share with her son! We can’t wait for our next Super Book Give-Away at next month’s BeSuper party! 
ECBC’s Super Book Give-Away Was a Success!
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!
Because we’re still waiting to get through CHOC’s lengthy volunteer on-boarding process in order to start “Reading Aloud in Every Room” (our bedside reading program), we are working on other ways to get books into the hands of patients NOW! We plan to join MaxLove Project regularly for their monthly BeSuper parties at CHOC, and we are working on setting up other ways to bring reading to CHOC as well (ways that don’t require volunteer approval). To be able to gift books to kids at these events, we need the new books to keep coming in — so PLEASE keep donating if you can. Here’s the link to our Wish List on Amazon — books purchased from this list will be sent directly to ECBC. 
Thank you to Kids READ!, Saddleback Educational Publishing, and PBS SoCal for providing the books for this event!
Please Donate Storytime Huxley for Kids Battling Cancer!
Please check out Ethan’s video request for donations of Storytime Huxley — a plush bear who also tells stories! As part of ECBC’s efforts to bring reading to hospitalized kids, we want to gift Huxley to kids battling cancer and other life-threatening conditions! We also hope to include him in our Read+Think+Thrive boxes for SuperKids battling cancer around the country!
Huxley can be donated easily by clicking on the link to our Amazon Wish List. Huxley, and any other book donations from this list, will be sent directly to ECBC.