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
THANK YOU Hicks Canyon Elementary School for hosting a spring book drive and collecting 77 new books for ECBC — all of which will be going directly to CHOC this Friday as part of our monthly outpatient library re-stocking day. We are so grateful that you chose to support ECBC at BOTH your school book fairs this year, and we are super excited about your commitment to partner with us in the future. And a big thank you to Tina Jussal for your ongoing leadership in putting together book drives for us. We are giving away a significant number of books (~500+ per month), so we depend on schools like Hicks to keep on going. Thank you!
Thank you Baum Ortho for this amazing donation of 108 new books! Baum families who donated, as usual, you did a terrific job at picking out highly popular titles and so much variety — we received books in every book type category! We are so very grateful for ECBC’s ongoing partnership with Baum Ortho. It makes a big difference for us to have these awesome books coming in regularly, which go right to oncology and other patients at CHOC Children’s Hospital!
How amazing is this?! A HUGE donation of teen/YA books from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), via Arvida Book Co who attended their conference last month. Exact number TBD, but it’s looking upwards of 1000 books. THANK YOU NCTE, publishers, and Arvida for making it easier for us to provide hospitalized teens with excellent literature!
Thank you @pagesabookstore (in Manhattan Beach) for hosting a book drive for ECBC, and thank you @novelthoughts_bymax for organizing it. Forty-nine great books, mostly Halloween-themed…which will be delivered to patients at CHOC Children’s Hospital in the next few days!
Andersen Elementary School in Newport Beach hosted a coin drive for ECBC alongside their school book fair. With the funds collected, they were able to purchase 102 new Halloween books for our Halloween book gifting at CHOC next week! THANK YOU Andersen Elementary for supporting ECBC and for helping us get closer to the significant number of books we need to collect!
Thank you to the Orange Chamber of Commerce for conducting a Halloween book drive in the month of September, and of course thank you to everyone who contributed to it. They collected a terrific collection of 119 new Halloween-themed books, which gives us a great start towards the 600 books that we need for our BOO-ks for Treats Halloween event at CHOC Children’s Hospital. And a huge THANK YOU to Orange Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Elizabeth Holloman for all your work to organize and oversee the book drive — sharing the wish list, opening all the packages, bookplating with donor names; we appreciate your help so very much!!
If anyone didn’t get a chance to donate a Halloween book and would like to, we still need hundreds! You can select a book off our list and it will come directly to Ethan & Choco’s Book Club: https://a.co/8wsb23B
THANK YOU PaKua Orange for hosting a book drive in the month of September, and THANK YOU PaKua families for the 84 books that you donated. PaKua has supported ECBC since our first BOOK IT fundraiser in 2018 and we appreciate their continued partnership so very much!
A HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who supported ECBC’s BOOK IT 2022 Virtual Run and Book Drive by “running” 5, donating 5, creating a fundraising team, and/or sharing on social media. Together, 123 donors raised $25,000. While this is only half of our fundraising goal, we knew this goal was ambitious yet hopeful, reflecting the increased costs of our growing book and reading programs at CHOC Children’s Hospital. The BOOK IT donation site is still up and open for donations if you haven’t had a chance to contribute (runsignup.com/BOOKIT2022), though there will be no more explicit monetary pushes for BOOK IT until 2023. We will immediately be turning to outreach for our Halloween book drive (for which we need approximately 600 new books), and we are hopeful that a strong response in the form of direct book donations will minimize book purchases and thus the cash output towards our Halloween event.
I would like to extend a super special thank you to our top donors and fundraising teams. Thank you to our top fundraisers Mary Kay Viscounty, Susie Alexander, and Dr. Van Huynh (as well as ECBC Co-Founder Ethan)… We are so grateful for your personal efforts to rally others behind our cause. A tremendous thank you also to our top individual “$500 and above” donors: Tod and Sharon Paris, Keith and Katherine Dunleavy, Kevin Kodzis, CHOC Hyundai Cancer Institute, Sur West Homes, Shameeron Paur, Rob and Brooke Lieberman, Molly Cronin, Tootie Nienow, Erin and Jeff Denes, Susie Alexander, Tracy and Jeremy Stahl, the Antonius family, and an ongoing ECBC friend and advocate who wishes to remain anonymous but deserves mention being our very top donor (this year and every year prior!). Together, this mighty group was vital to the success of this campaign, having contributed more than 60% of the total funds raised. Finally, a special shout out to Jack Carlisle/The Potting Shed and Fenny Kokenge/Fenny’s Flowers as well as Dori Renn/Cirkel Fitness for hosting your own events in the community (Houseplants 101, DIY succulents, yoga class) to raise awareness and funds for BOOK IT! And of course, thank you to the ECBC Board of Directors for all their efforts and commitment to keep ECBC going.
Thank you everyone for supporting ECBC during this especially difficult time to be a super tiny nonprofit. Your donations allow ECBC to keep helping hospitalized kids to thrive through treatment with books and reading — which is a powerful contributor to cognitive health and thus general wellness and thrivership.
Please stay connected with ECBC by following us on our website (ethanandchocosbookclub.com) or on Facebook/Instagram (@ethanandchocosbookclub). And save the date for BOOKIT 2023, hopefully in-person — Monday, September 4.
With deepest gratitude,
Ali, Ethan and the ECBC Team
* Please know that 100% of funds and books raised go to ECBC operating and program costs — ECBC has no employees and I take no salary.
THANK YOU Hicks Canyon Elementary families for the 83 books that you purchased for ECBC at your book fair this past week! We appreciate your support so much, and we can’t wait to get all these great books to patients at CHOC Children’s Hospital! A special shout out to Tina Jussal for your making this happen despite such short notice!
A HUGE thank you to Baum Ortho for this amazing donation of 160 new books! Baum families who donated, you did a terrific job at picking out highly popular titles and so much variety — we received books in every book type category! We are so very grateful for ECBC’s ongoing partnership with Baum Ortho. It makes a big difference for us to have these awesome books coming in regularly, which go right to oncology and other patients at CHOC Children’s Hospital!
