Friday was ECBC’s last day at CHOC Children’s Hospital, where we hosted our annual BOO-ks for Treats as part of CHOC’s Halloween event. As we have every year at this event, we gave away hundreds of new Halloween-themed books. One thing we’ve prided ourselves on for the past ten years of book gifting is highly nuanced curation of titles — with books for not only every patient age but also kids’ varying interests and genre preferences. This has made it more likely that we meet patients’ nuanced reading preferences — allowing them to select books they are are excited about and increasing the likelihood that they actually read! Remarkably, even every teen and young adult selected a book — whether it be young adult horror or Edgar Allen Poe in graphic novel form or scary short stories or Latin American monster stories for teens. And we heard the best reactions — multiple kids saying “they saved the best for last” (ECBC was the last booth on the 40-table trick-or-treating circuit) and several saying they were excited to go up to their room to read their new book. How good it feels to hand out “brain candy” to sick kids on Halloween!
Thank you to NCL North Tustin, Arroyo Elementary School, and our Amazon wishlist donors for helping to make our last event a great success. We are especially thankful for those of you who did a final grand donation of many books! And thank you to El Dorado High School’s Books 4 CHOC club and FHS’s California Scholarship Federation for the beautiful handmade Halloween cards that we passed out along with the books. And a special thank you to Susie and Julie for being there today, and from the start of ECBC to the very end. I am so grateful for you both!
Having BOO-ks for Treats as ECBC’s last activity at the hospital was a full-circle moment for ECBC co-founders, myself and Ethan. Halloween at CHOC was the first event we attended as patients in 2014, just after being diagnosed with high-risk Leukemia . Ethan dressed up as a hip hopster and trick or treated with his siblings (pre-ECBC , so without a booth giving away books!), and later that same day he had surgery to place his port in his chest and begin chemo. So this felt like a perfect way to end ECBC, saying goodbye with our most personally meaningful event.
While we are sad ECBC is done, we are focusing on celebrating a decade of impact through the thousands of hours spent reading at patients’ bedside and the tens of thousands of books we gifted. Now, we turn to the more tedious work of dissolving the nonprofit.
