Ethan & Choco's Book Club

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


Leave a comment

Largest Outpatient Delivery Day To Date!

Today was our monthly re-stocking day at CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center (OPI) and at the Oncology Clinic. Usually our bins have scattered books remaining, but today every bin from both libraries was completely empty — so we donated a total of 515 new books for infant through teenage/young adult aged patients. One of the oncology nurses mentioned that patients are now arriving for their chemo infusion or their oncology visit eager to choose a book, and almost all kids are choosing a book over a toy. As stated in our mission, ECBC strives “to make access to books and reading a core part of the care that kids receive in the hospital” — it’s so exciting that books have become a regular and expected part of patients’ outpatient oncology experience!

Today, May 24, is also the 5 year anniversary of the launching of our inpatient program at CHOC, which includes bedside reading in patient rooms by our education/literacy expert volunteers as well as our mobile gifting book cart program. Currently, our bedside reading and mobile books cart programs run on the 5th floor, which is oncology, neurology, and multi-speciality — so many of the hospital’s sickest kids with the longest stays. With sustained and improved funding we hope to someday be able to expand this program to bring high-quality literature and reading experiences to all inpatient floors!

PLEASE help us sustain and grow our programs by joining us at BOOK IT, our annual charity walk/run in Irvine, CA! You can sign up to walk or run (as well as donate) by clicking HERE! And, please share our BOOK IT registration site with your own family and friends — https://runsignup.com/BOOKIT2023!


Leave a comment

Thank you Foothill High School

THANK YOU Foothill High School families for donating books to Ethan & Choco’s Book Club last month. There is always such an abundance of information and philanthropic opportunities coming from our kids’ schools, and we so appreciate your taking the time to support ECBC’s programs at CHOC. A huge shout out to FHS’ Ethan & Choco’s Club for hosting such a successful book drive! You collected 100 new books –approximately $1000 worth — a record for a high school book drive for ECBC! Your posters, social media marketing, on-site and online options for book donations, and your homemade brownie incentive all paid off!

If teens are interested in starting an Ethan & Choco Club at their own high school, refer to/print flyer below or email ali@ECbookclub.com.


Leave a comment

Thank You Brookhaven Elementary!

THANK YOU Brookhaven Elementary School for hosting a book drive for ECBC at your book fair last week, and for the 134 new books that were donated by your families! And a HUGE thank you to Jennifer Wolsky Garnant for organizing the book drive and to Will for counting the books and ensuring they are all bookplated! We are so grateful for your support; all of these books will be going to CHOC oncology patients next week!


Leave a comment

Outpatient re-stocking day!

Today was outpatient book delivery day for the month of March! Patients went through more books this past month than ever in the past, and we restocked 450 books for patients of all ages. Many kids and families are now looking forward to their visits because they know they will get to pick out a new high-quality book from a fantastic and varied collection. Books motivating kids to look forward to their oncology and chemo infusion visits—I’d call that success for ECBC for sure!

To help ECBC re-stock for next month’s delivery, CLICK HERE to purchase a book from our Amazon wish list. Or, CLICK HERE to make a monetary donation.


Leave a comment

THANK YOU Hicks Canyon!

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!


Leave a comment

Outpatient Book Delivery Day at CHOC

Today we re-stocked our outpatient libraries at CHOC Children’s Hospital with 250 new books. This allows all patients visiting CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center (OPI) and the Oncology Clinic to select a new, age-appropriate book when they visit for a chemo infusion or physician appointment. We deliver 200-500 books each month to our outpatient libraries so we are grateful to our donors who help us to make this possible. To donate a book from our amazon wish list, CLICK HERE. All books will be sent directly to ECBC and bookplated with donor name.


Leave a comment

Holiday Reading for CHOC Patients!

On Monday we delivered several hundred December holiday-themed books to our outpatient libraries, and yesterday we filled up our Gifting Library Cart on the inpatient side at CHOC for kids who are stuck in the hospital over the holidays. We also added wonderful holiday books to each age category of our Read Aloud Wagons. Thank you to Bedside Readers Mary Kay and Suzanne for launching holiday storytimes in patient rooms yesterday! Patient favorite of the day: Tough Cookie: A Christmas Story (by Edward Hemingway).

We will continue to re-stock our gifting cart with holiday books for the month of December as long as we have inventory…but we will go through the books fast since the hospital is at full capacity. Please consider donating a book from our holiday wish list! Click HERE to access the list.


Leave a comment

THANK YOU TVT!!!

HOW COMPLETELY AMAZING IS THIS??! Tarbut V’ Torah (TVT) Lower School just collected and donated 1,024 new books for ECBC! This is impressive for a school of any size, but TVT’s lower school has only 410 students! A ton of great books of every type — this will help us for months! TVT has always been our strongest school partner, donating 200 or more books every year since we started ECBC. But this year they knocked it out of the park! They beat their own school record from 2019 of 310 books, and they far exceeded their goal for this year of 350 books. They also almost doubled the school donation record across all school donors of 531 books!

THANK YOU TVT families for helping ECBC help hospitalized kids to thrive through treatment with books and reading. Congratulations to the 4th graders for collecting the most books and earning the ice cream party (which apparently the whole school now gets due to the generous cash kickback from Scholastic!)! And a very special thank you to the Diaz family for your super significant contribution!!!  Also thank you to the 4th/5th grade leadership class for your amazing efforts at rallying the school with your posters and videos — it is so exciting to hear that every kid got on board! And thank you to Galina and Hayley for all your help organizing the book drive. ECBC is so very grateful for our ongoing partnership with TVT!


Leave a comment

THANK YOU NCTE AND ARVIDA!

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! 


Leave a comment

It’s Giving Tuesday! Please help!

In the spirit of #GivingTuseday and the upcoming holiday season, please consider purchasing a book from ECBC’s December holiday wish list (CLICK HERE). All books will go directly to hospitalized kids — who are either inpatient at CHOC, visiting the outpatient oncology clinic or the infusion center for chemo, or patients and siblings who are living at Miracle for Kids’ subsidized housing. Donate now and patients will start receiving holiday books next week! All books donated will be sent directly to ECBC and bookplated with donor name.