Ethan & Choco's Book Club

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


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Holiday Book Drive at Arvida Book Company!

It’s December, which means that over the next few weeks Ethan & Choco’s Book Club will be giving away a ton of holiday-themed books to kids who are inpatient at CHOC Children’s Hospital as well as to kids who are visiting CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center and CHOC’s Oncology Clinic. Please help by donating a December holiday-themed book! One way you can do so is by visiting Arvida Book Company in Old Town Tustin. Arvida is hosting an onsite book drive all month, where donors can purchase and donate new children’s and young adult books — a win-win for the store and for ECBC/CHOC! Also, please consider visiting Arvida Monday December 6 from 4:00-7:00 for Happy Hour Book Drive, hosted by Arvida and the Jack & Jill Guild of CHOC Children’s. You can buy a book to donate and stay for the Happy Hour with food for purchase from American Grub. Books can also be purchased via ECBC’s Holiday Book Wish List on Amazon — click HERE to access.

Thank you for helping kids thrive through the holidays with with books and reading!


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Holiday Book Drive!

Today is December 1st, which means we need books to spread some literary joy to kids stuck in the hospital over the holidays! Please consider donating a book from ECBC’s December Holiday Book Wish List for our holiday book gifting at CHOC Children’s Hospital! We need books for all ages!

CLICK HERE to donate!


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HALLOWEEN BOOKS DELIVERED!

Today we dropped off BOO-ks for Treats bags for 200 patients (each bag filled with two Halloween-themed books curated by age and gender) to CHOC Children’s for their reverse trick-or-treating event on Friday (as well as for CHOC Mission Hills patients). These 400 books along with the 200 delivered last week to CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center and the Oncology clinic (see included picture of post from one of our outpatient recipients) amount to 600 Halloween books delivered! We pride ourselves on providing both high-quality and high-interest age-appropriate literature so hopefully all patients from toddlers through teens and young adults will include some reading in their Halloween celebrations this year!

THANK YOU to all of our book donors who made it possible for ECBC to provide literary treats for every patient at CHOC and help kids to read, think, and THRIVE through their hospital stay. Thank you also to our $500 level BOOK IT donors who each funded approximately 50 books of this donation. All donors were recognized with their names on respective bookplates in each book. Happy Halloween! #BOOks4Treats #reversetrickortreating #braincandy #readthinkthrive #cognitivehealth #ecbc #chocchildrens


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It’s Book Delivery Day!

It’s book delivery day at CHOC Outpatient Infusion (OPI) Center and CHOC’s Oncology Clinic! We refilled our gifting libraries with approximately 300 new books for infants through teen/young adults, which included a ton of Halloween-theme books for kids who visit Oncology or OPI in the next week. We also re-stocked inventory of our Read + Think + Thrive Bags for kids newly diagnosed with cancer (which amount to too many diagnoses this month). And, we’re looking forward to our large Halloween book delivery for CHOC’s reverse trick or treating event next week! If you want to get in a last minute donation, you can do so by clicking HERE.


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ECBC IS BACK!

It was so wonderful to be back on the inpatient side of CHOC Children’s Hospital today with our Bedside Reading program and our mobile book cart (after being on hold since March 2020)! It is still so quiet there with still no events and limited volunteers, which were always an integral part of patient daily life at CHOC. So we felt wanted and very much needed! And how it warms my heart to learn from one of our expert bedside readers that, per patient request, she read aloud with a 16 year old for 35 minutes (Roald Dahl’s Book of Ghost Stories)! It can be tough to get a teen to agree to reading aloud, but when they y do, they often find that it’s enjoyable and a great break from they screen. Also, for the first time we were able to offer our “Tips for Caregivers” pamphlet with information about how they can help their kids to read, think, and thrive while at the hospital and going through treatment. They seemed to appreciate this resource, and we hope it will result in increased reading parents and caregivers in kids’ hospital rooms!


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Getting Ready to Return to CHOC…

ECBC Bedside Reader “re-group & re-train” (group 1) in preparation for our return to our inpatient program at CHOC next week! I am so grateful for our group of educators, librarians, and reading specialists who provide high quality read-aloud for the hospitalized kids who need it most! We are super excited to be back at CHOC next week!


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Halloween Book Drive for CHOC Children’s Hospital!

It’s October 1st, which means it’s time to turn from our annual BOOK IT fundraiser to our 5th annual Halloween book drive — a difficult thing to do right on the heels of BOOK IT, but usually BOOK IT ends on race day in the first week of September, not on September 30. We need approximately 500-600 books for patients who are stuck in the hospital on Halloween, as well as for kids who are visiting CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center and the Oncology clinic around that time. Please listen to Ethan’s video and consider donating a book if you didn’t get a chance to contribute to BOOK IT! Before Covid we received most our books for this from school book fairs and school book drives, which isn’t happening right now, so we could use all the support we can get to make this happen! Especially since we only made it to almost halfway of our fundraising goal for BOOK IT, your help with this is even more important. Patients LOVE getting high-quality Halloween themed books along with their usual candy and trinkets, so we absolutely LOVE being able to provide “literary candy” for the kids! All books purchased from this wish list will go directly to ECBC, and bookplates with donor names will go on every book. THANK YOU!

CLICK HERE FOR AMAZON WISH LIST LINK.


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Outpatient Book Delivery Day at CHOC!

Today was book re-stocking day at CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center and at the Oncology Clinic. We delivered 200 new books to be offered to oncology kiddos whenever they visit the hospital for a chemo infusion or for a check-up. We also delivered 19 of our Read+Think+Thrive Bags, which contain ten new books and art supplies and are delivered to all kids soon after they are diagnosed with cancer.

If you haven’t yet had a chance to donate to BOOK IT 2021, our annual fundraiser, please consider doing so now and helping us fund these book bags as well as other ECBC programs — runsignup.com/BOOKIT2021. 120-150 kids are diagnosed with cancer at CHOC per year, and we are hoping to continue to get book bags to every one! If you would prefer to donate a book, you can do so using this link to our BOOK IT 2021 Amazon Wish List: https://a.co/dgc3bwV. Thank you!


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120 Read Think Thrive Bags Packed and Ready To Go!

ECBC’s second Mega Read Think Thrive Bag Packaging Day! Today 120 book bags were packed by these awesome volunteers! A HUGE thank you to ECBC board members Sandy Tweedt, Susie Alexander, and Anne Case for planning and executing this day — It’s not a small feat, as these bags contain approximately $20K in high-quality books, art supplies, book lights, bookmarks, journals, blank books and blank comic books, a parent resource pamphlet with tips for supporting reading through treatment, and Ethan’s creative response thrive challenges —all curated by the gender and six age groups of the recipients. We can’t wait to get these bags into the hands of kids at CHOC as they are diagnosed with cancer —a toolbox of sorts to support cognitive health and thrivership through treatment (when cognitive health is often at risk due to lack of school and literature-based experiences, limited social interaction, less varied world experiences, and treatment methods and disease processes that directly affect cognition.).

THANK YOU amazing volunteers and totally awesome board of Directors, we couldn’t do any of this without yout! And a great big thank you to Erik Tweedt for sharing your warehouse space with EBCB for storage and packaging days — we are so grateful.

If you’d like to help fund these bags, as well as other ECBC book and reading programs at CHOC, please consider donating to our annual fundraiser at www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2021. Or, if you’d like to donate a book directly, you can purchase a book from our BOOOK IT2021 Amazon Wish List by clicking HERE.


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Please consider supporting ECBC in honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month!

This photo popped up in my Facebook feed today — from September 1, 2015 — the first day of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month six years ago and also the day that Ethan returned to school for 3rd grade after missing all of second grade. He had just finished the hardest part of his 3.5 year battle with Leukemia. While he still had a ways to go at this point with 2.5 more years of chemo, he was kicking cancer’s butt — loving school, playing tennis and golf, and reading voraciously into so many fictional and nonfictional worlds. This photo was also just a few months before we founded Ethan & Choco’s Book Club (ECBC), where Ethan and I committed to making sure that kids undergoing treatment at CHOC, especially life-altering illness such as cancer, received the same benefits from books and reading that he did while battling Leukemia. 

ECBC has come a long way since its inception — with numerous inpatient and outpatient reading programs for patients of all ages and gifting thousands of books a year. BUT we need your help in order to sustain our book gifting programs and re-launch our inpatient programs in October (we were just given the green light to bring our volunteers back to CHOC, woo hoo!). We are highly dependent on our annual fundraiser, BOOK IT, which provides the majority of the funds ECBC needs to run its programs. In the spirit of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month , please consider supporting thrivership for kid cancer warriors by donating to our online fundraiser.  We are aiming to raise enough funds to get us to next September 2022, when we are hoping to host a full BOOK IT with a return of our in-person charity runs and book drive.

Here’s how you can help:

  • Make a monetary donation online at www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2021
  • Become a “fundraiser”, with your own fundraiser name, monetary goal, and unique URL that can be used to send people directly to your fundraiser page. Click here to set up your fundraising page.
  • Donate a book directly. Click here to access the BOOK IT 2021 Amazon Wish List. All books purchased from this list will be automatically sent to Ethan & Choco’s Book Club.
  • Conduct your own book drive. If you wish to collect books on your own or conduct your own book drive with your family/friends/workplace for subsequent in-person donation, please email ali@ECbookclub.com We will send you a link to a separate wish list that you can share with your community and that let’s you specify the address to ship the books.
  • Help us spread the word by sharing the link to the donation site: http://www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2021.

Thank you for helping Orange County’s hospitalized kids thrive through treatment!


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PLEASE support BOOK IT 2021 with an online donation!

PLEASE HELP Support BOOK IT 2021!

We’re currently running our annual fundraising push — which is, again for a second year, online only. We so wish it could be through our in-person charity run and book drive, though that was not possible due to the ongoing uncertainty around potential Covid-19 restrictions at the time that event decisions had to be made. HOWEVER, ECBC NEEDS YOUR HELP NOW MORE THAN EVER!  Our costs are way up, since outgoing book donations actually increased during Covid, while incoming book donations have been way down over the past year and a half. Additionally, ECBC just received the green light to resume our bedside reading and library programs on the inpatient side of CHOC on October 15th. Which is AWESOME news — but we need enough funds to sustain the new book gifting activities we are doing with CHOC outpatient as well as re-launch our programs that we were running pre-Covid. We are aiming to raise enough funds to get us to September 2022, when we are hoping to host a full BOOK IT with a return of our in-person charity runs, book drive, and celebration of thrivership against cancer through books and reading!

Here are five ways you can support the BOOK IT 2021 virtual fundraiser:

  1. Make a monetary donation online at www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2021
  2. Become a “fundraiser”, with your own fundraiser name, monetary goal, and unique URL that can be used to send people directly to your fundraiser page. Click here to set up your fundraising page.
  3. Donate a book directly. Click here to access the BOOK IT 2021 Amazon Wish List. All books purchased from this list will be automatically sent to Ethan & Choco’s Book Club.
  4. Conduct your own book drive. If you wish to collect books on your own or conduct your own book drive with your family/friends/workplace for subsequent in-person donation, please email ali@ECbookclub.com We will send you a link to a separate wish list that you can share with your community and that let’s you specify the address to ship the books. 
  5. Help us spread the word by sharing the link to the donation site: http://www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2021. 

Thank you for helping Orange County’s hospitalized kids thrive thrive through treatment!


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CHOC Outpatient Oncology Book Delivery Day!

CHOC Outpatient Infusion Center and Oncology Clinic book re-stocking day! 200 new books to be offered to oncology kiddos whenever they are visiting the hospital for a a chemo infusion or check-up. PLEASE help us to sustain this and other ECBC book and reading programs at CHOC by supporting our annual fundraiser — this year online only, at www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2021


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Please Support BOOK IT 2021, ECBC’s Annual Fundraiser!

It’s that time of year for Ethan & Choco’s Book Club to do our annual fundraising push. We wish it could be through our  in-person charity run and book drive. However, due to the ongoing uncertainty around potential Covid-19 restrictions at the time that event decisions had to be made, ECBC will not be hosting our in-person event again this year.  We are, however, conducting the virtual fundraising and book drive component of BOOK IT, which we hope will receive a strong response so that ECBC can continue to sustain and grow its book and reading programs at CHOC Children’s Hospital. 

We need your support now more than ever!  Our costs are way up (since outgoing book donations actually increased during Covid), while incoming book donations have been way down over the past year and a half. We are aiming to raise enough funds to get us to September 2022, when we are hoping to host a full BOOK IT with a return of our in-person charity runs, book drive, and celebration of thrivership against cancer through books and reading!

Here are five ways you can support the BOOK IT 2021 virtual fundraiser:

  1. Make a monetary donation online at www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2021
  2. Become a “fundraiser”, with your own fundraiser name, monetary goal, and unique URL that can be used to send people directly to your fundraiser page. Click here to set up your fundraising page.
  3. Donate a book directly. Click here to access the BOOK IT 2021 Amazon Wish List. All books purchased from this list will be automatically sent to Ethan & Choco’s Book Club.
  4. Conduct your own book drive. If you wish to collect books on your own or conduct your own book drive with your family/friends/workplace for subsequent in-person donation, please email ali@ECbookclub.com We will send you a link to a separate wish list that you can share with your community and that let’s you specify the address to ship the books. 
  5. Help us spread the word by sharing the link to the donation site: http://www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2021. 

Thank you for helping Orange County’s hospitalized kids thrive thrive through treatment!


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Outpatient Oncology Delivery Day!

Re-stocking day at CHOC Children’s Hospital oncology clinic and Outpatient Infusion Center(OPI). A few hundred high quality books so kids of all ages infants through teens can be offered a book whenever they visit outpatient oncolgoy whether it be for a routine visit of chemo at OPI. We also had the pleasure of delivering this specially curated bag of books for a middle school patient who inspired his buddies to conduct a school-wide book drive –the personal deliveries that are base don kids’ actual reading interest are always so fun!


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THANK YOU Grace Lutheran School!

A HUGE thank you to Grace Lutheran School for their donation of 200 new, fantastic books of all types, ranging from board books to picture books and chapter books to informational texts, graphic novels and teen literature. ECBC is especially grateful for the hard work of these 6th grade boys, who organized and conducted the school-wide book drive as their spring service project. The boys made flyers to distribute to school families, created their own video/commercial to share with all of the classes, made book collection boxes, ran book collection tables for the 12 day that they held the book drive. This is the first (and only) book donation that we received from a school during the 2020-2021 school year, so we are deeply appreciative. Thank you Grace Lutheran and especially this crew of terrific boys!.


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Book Delivery Days Are the Best!

We just delivered new, high-quality books of all types to re-stock our library cart and bookshelves at CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center and CHOC’s Oncology Clinic, respectively. We also replenished CHOC Oncology’s inventory of our Read Think Thrive Bags for kids newly diagnosed with cancer, so that they can start their battle with cancer with the best materials that make it easier for parents to promote cognitive health and thrivership during treatment. It really is the best feeling to fill bookshelves with awesome, high-quality literature that many of these patients wouldn’t otherwise have access to! #readthinkthrive #cognitivehealth #thriveagainstcancer


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A Most MAGNIFICENT donation!

We just received the MOST AMAZING book donation, thanks to ECBC bedside reader and longtime supporter Fenny Kogenge! Upon the recent passing of Fenny’s father-in-law, Fenny asked for book donations from family and friends in his memory, rather than flowers. We created an Amazon wish list of the many titles that ECBC most needs, and the response was truly tremendous. The books were sent directly to Fenny, and she had all of the titles on display at the beautiful celebration of life that she hosted at her home. Additionally, Fenny (@Fenny’s Flowers) created twenty gorgeous succulent arrangements and auctioned them off in an online silent auction, where she used 100% of the proceeds to purchase additional books from the wish list. Fenny collected and just delivered a combined total of 540 books — all high quality wonderful titles, all bookplated with custom book plates in memory of Gene Kokenge. THANK YOU Fenny for this tremendous and creative bookraising effort — it is by far the most significant donation of the past year and much needed due to the volume of books we are gifting regularly to kids at CHOC Children’s Hospital. And thank you to Jason and Georgia; we are so grateful that they wanted to honor their father and husband in this way. We can’t wait to get these wonderful books into the hands of kids at CHOC who are battling cancer and other life-threatening conditions! #booksinsteadofflowers #bookdrive #books4CHOC #thriveagainstcancer #readthinkthrive

  • THANK YOU KOKENGE FAMILY!


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Silent Auction Benefiting ECBC!

Please check out ECBC’s amazing bedside reader Fenny’s silent auction, this Sunday on Facebook from 9:00 AM – 2:00 PM. She is auctioning off 20 beautiful succulent arrangements! Visit https://www.facebook.com/fennysflowers to bid!

Fenny is using all proceeds to purchase books for ECBC and kids battling cancer! THANK YOU FENNY, YOU ARE THE BEST!

Here’s her post on FB, with pictures of each of the succulent items she is auctioning.

Auction Items on Facebook @FennysFlowers


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Book Delivery Day at CHOC!

Today was book delivery day for ECBC at CHOC Outpatient Oncology — we re-stocked our library cart at the Outpatient Infusion Center, re-filled bookshelves at the Oncology Clinic, and replenished inventory of Read Think Thrive Bags for new cancer diagnoses. Cancer diagnoses are WAY up right now, especially among teens. Which I hate hearing so much. But i love that through ECBC we can help kids thrive through treatment by gifting them a mini library of wonderful new books.

Our regular book donations to ECBC have all but stopped, with nothing coming in from school book fairs or community events. To help us sustain our book gifting programs, please CLICK HERE to make a cash donation or click on these links to donate a book from our Amazon Wish Lists: Board books, Spanish books, all types of books.