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!
THANK YOU Arroyo families for donating 52 great books at your book fair last week! ECBC is so grateful for your ongoing support for the past seven years!
It’s October, which means it’s time to turn to our Halloween book drive for our 6th annual BOO-ks for Treats event at CHOC Children’s Hospital. This is always a hard ask immediately after our BOOK IT fundraiser. However, this event has become a significant part of CHOC’s Halloween celebration, it is especially important to our founder Ethan, and the number of books that we need for it is quite hefty (approximately 600 new books). If you didn’t get a chance to donate to BOOK IT, please listen to Ethan’s video and consider purchasing a book or two from our Halloween-themed Amazon wish list. Especially since we only made it to 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.
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.
Today is the last day of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and it is also the final day of ECBC’s annual BOOK IT Fundraiser! We are just under 50% of our fundraising goal, so if anyone has intended to donate but hasn’t yet had the chance, PLEASE consider doing so now — it takes just a few minutes! Today we feature two of the many oncology kiddos who have benefited from our Read Think Thrive Bag program: Carter, who is no longer with us but his love of reading impacts ECBC through his amazing community’s CarterStrongForever book drives; and Blake, a current oncology warrior who is reading and thriving through a marathon of a battle with brain cancer. These bags (a mini library of ten new books curated by the age of the child + book crafting supplies) go to every child at CHOC infant/toddler through teen/young adult who is diagnosed with cancer, and the goal is to someday get these to all kids who are diagnosed with cancer throughout the U.S.– a hefty goal for our tiny nonprofit with a cost of approximately $150/bag. New cancer diagnoses at CHOC this year are the highest they have been in the history of the hospital — at 94 to date since January, we need additional funding to keep up!
If you haven’t yet donated and would like to help us continue to fund our Read Think Thrive Bag program for kids just diagnosed with cancer , we would so appreciate your support! Donate at www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2022. We know first hand the benefits of books and reading through treatment and are passionate about making sure other patients have the same opportunities to thrive — but we need your help! Please share this post if you can!
There are two days left of ECBC’s annual BOOK IT fundraiser, and we are at just 40% of our fundraising goal. We are hoping for a strong finish in our final two days as we need to do significantly better to keep funding all of our book and reading programs and CHOC Children’s Hospital. Each day of these last few days, I have been sharing a photo of an Oncology kiddo at CHOC whom our programs have benefited. Today we have two featured warriors: Blake, holding one of the two Halloween-themed books he received from ECBC’s annual BOO-ks for Treats event at CHOC (where we donate approximately 600 new Halloween books for patients toddler through young adult); and Isabella, an oncology patient living at Miracle Manor (Miracles for Kids’ subsidized housing for CHOC families) who just received books from ECBC at the Miracle Manor Christmas party (ECBC provides holiday books for all kids living at Miracle Manor, picked out for each child by their personal interests). If you haven’t yet donated and would like to help us continue to fund our book gifting programs for oncology kids stuck in the hospital over the holidays , we would so appreciate your support! Donate at www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2022. Even the smallest donations will help us to keep all of our programs going!
There are three days left of ECBC’s annual BOOK IT fundraiser, and we are at just 40% of our fundraising goal. We are hoping for a strong finish in these last few days as we need to do significantly better to keep funding all of our book and reading programs and CHOC Children’s Hospital. Each day of these last few days, I am sharing a photo of an Oncology kiddo at CHOC whom our programs have benefited. Here’s today’s featured warrior: Ruby, a teen cancer patient at CHOC who is a member of ECBC’s Teens Thrive Reading Group — a virtual book club for teen and young adult oncology patients and survivors that provides a free Kindle, Kindle case, and monthly Kindle books to participants. The club is currently offered to CHOC oncology patients but with enough funding we hope to expand it to offer to oncology teens across the country. If you haven’t yet donated and would like to help us continue to fund our teen/young adult book club program, we would so appreciate your support! Donate at www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2022.
There are just four days left of ECBC’s annual BOOK IT fundraiser, and we are just shy of 2/5 of our fundraising goal. We are hoping for a strong finish in these last few days as we need to do significantly better to keep funding all of our book and reading programs and CHOC Children’s Hospital. Each day of these last few days, I am sharing a photo of an Oncology kiddo at CHOC whom our programs have benefited. Here’s today’s featured warrior: a child on the inpatient side who is being read to by Mary Kay, one of ECBC’s amazing bedside readers/literacy coach experts who shares quality literature and reads aloud in a way that models and nurtures literacy skills and rich dialogue. Oncology patients are often not attending school and missing literature-based classroom experiences, and they also often receive chemo that affects their neurocognitive functioning — so this program aims to provide cognitive benefits in addition to social and emotional ones! Our bedside reading program depends on hardcover books for read alouds, paperback books that can be gifted, art supplies for book-inpspired crafting, and other support materials such as bookmarks, motivational reading bracelets, parent “how to support literacy through treatment” pamphlets and various operational costs including off-site storage of books. If you haven’t yet donated and would like to help us continue to fund our inpatient bedside reading program, we would so appreciate your support. Donate at www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2022.
There are just five days left of ECBC’s annual BOOK IT fundraiser, and we are just shy of 2/5 of our fundraising goal. We are hoping for a strong finish in these last few days as we need to do significantly better to keep funding all of our book and reading programs and CHOC Children’s Hospital. Each day of these last few days, I am sharing a photo of an Oncology kiddo at CHOC whom our programs have benefited. Here’s today’s featured warrior: Will is selecting a book as he leaves the Outpatient Infusion Center (OPI) after receiving chemo — kids get to select a book at every visit to the OPI or the Oncology Clinic from our outpatient gifting libraries. If you haven’t yet donated and would like to help us continue to fund our outpatient libraries for kids like Will, we would so appreciate your support. Donate at www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2022.
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!
How awesome is this?! In honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and Hispanic Heritage Month, Olga Hernandez conducted a Spanish-language book drive amongst her family and friends. She just delivered 86 terrific new Spanish books, bookplated with her donors’ names and ready to be delivered to kids at CHOC! This is super helpful, as we are constantly in need of Spanish-language books, yet we rarely have any in our inventory. THANK YOU so very much, Olga! for taking this on and helping us in this much needed way! And thank you Fenny Meyling Kokenge for connecting ECBC with yet another amazing supporter!
It’s more than halfway through Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, which means it’s more than halfway through our annual BOOK IT fundraiser! And we’ve only raised 1/4 of our fundraising goal — a goal we need to reach to be able to continue all our book gifting and reading programs at CHOC, as well as to grow our impact to reach more kids on more patient floors. This past week, a Facebook memory popped up from September 15th, six years ago. It was a post with a link to this video of Ethan giving his 259th “Book Look”, which was how we collected our first few thousand books after initially launching ECBC. Ethan was still in the midst of treatment, and as is obvious, he is visibly not feeling well (link to video: https://youtu.be/e742S_o5HvA). This video, of Ethan pushing through the discomfort caused by chemo and steroids, is a reminder of just how strongly he believed in the mission of ECBC and wanted to ensure that other kids going through treatment for cancer received the same benefits of books and reading. In honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and our efforts to continue to help oncology patients and other hospitalized kids to continue to thrive w, please help us!
If you haven’t yet completed our Run5-Donate5-Nominate5- challenge, please click on the “Donate” button in this email to learn more and make a “multiple of 5” donation. If doing the challenge feels too difficult, of course you can simply donate! We need our community to keep on doing what we do!
Today was book re-stocking day at CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center as well as at the Oncology Clinic. We delivered 295 new books so that patients can continue to pick out a great book at every outpatient visit. Thanks to all of our donors who allow us to continue to support oncology kids’ thrivership with books and reading! To help ECBC fund next month’s delivery, please join in on our BOOK IT annual fundraiser and participate in the Run 5 Donate 5 Nominate 5 Challenge — link to learn more and donate is www.runsignup.com/BOOKIT2022.
ECBC will not be hosting our annual in-person fundraising event again this year. Continued uncertainty regarding Covid-19 at the time that event decisions had to be made, along with significant upfront event costs, posed too great a risk for our tiny nonprofit. We are, however, conducting a virtual run and book drive — and WE NEED YOUR HELP MORE THAN EVER!
Please support BOOK IT 2022 by participating in our RUN 5 DONATE 5 NOMINATE 5 Challenge! It involves these 3 simple steps:
Other ways you can help include:
Digital/printable BOOK IT 2022 flyer to share: https://ethanandchocosbookclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/BookIt_2022_DigitalFlyerV.3_Linked.pdf
THANK YOU for helping kids thrive through treatment with high-quality books and reading experiences!
SAVE THE DATE! SEPTEMBER 4 2023! THANK YOU for BOOKing IT with ECBC to support cognitive health and thrivership through books and reading at CHOC Children’s Hospital! BOOK IT! will return next year with our onsite walk/run events, community book drive, and literary costume contest. Mark your calendars!
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!
Re-stocking day at our mini gifting libraries at Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC)‘s Outpatient Infusion Center and the Oncology Clinic. We delivered 400 new, high-quality books so that kids can select one at every outpatient visit! Thanks to all our donors who allow us to continue to make this happen!
A HUGE thank you to these eight (one is missing from photo) seventh graders at Grace Lutheran School in Huntington Beach for choosing ECBC for their service spring project for a second year in a row! They ran a terrific school-wide book drive, including hosting a book donation table for a week+ before and after school, making flyers and book collection boxes, creating their own promotional video/commercial to share online, and sorting/counting all of the books. In sum, they collected a total of 217 new books for kids of all ages, which is especially impressive given this school’s super small student population. Also, a huge shout out to Joi Vutpakdi for rallying the kids behind our cause as well as all of her work to help the kids make their book drive a success. And of course, thank you to all the Grace Lutheran families for all of your generous book donations. THANK YOU GRACE LUTHERAN!
Yesterday we re-stocked our libraries at CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center and at the Oncology Clinic — 360 new books for patients of all ages to select every time they visit the hospital. THANK YOU so much to the handful of schools and local businesses that took the initiative to hold their own book drives. We wouldn’t be able to keep up with this volume of new book gifting without your support ($2000-$4000 value in books per month).
This morning we delivered 28 of our Read Think Thrive Bags for kids recently diagnosed with cancer at CHOC Children’s Hospital. Way too many diagnoses in just the last few weeks. We are so grateful to be able to start every oncology warrior off on his/her battle with a mini-library of new, high-quality books to help them escape the hospital room and thrive through treatment.
To sponsor a bag for a child, please CLICK HERE to donate! $50 covers the canvas bag, pencil pouch, and art supplies, and $150 covers the entire package including ten books. THANK YOU for helping ECBC to keep this program going!
