Thank you Arroyo families who purchased Halloween books for ECBC at your book fair last week! We have so appreciated Arroyo’s support for ten consecutive years! If any Arroyo families didn’t get a chance to donate a book and would like to, we still need a few hundred more! Click HERE to donate!
ECBC has had so much fun over the past couple weeks celebrating Halloween with CHOC patients by sharing terrific Halloween-themed literature! This includes patients and siblings trick-or-treating for 207 Halloween books at our annual BOO-ks for Treats event; delivering 473 Halloween-themed books to our outpatient libraries at CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center and at the Oncology Clinic; handing out 97 Halloween books individually to patient rooms via our Mobile Book Cart; and reading a whole bunch of spooky stories at oncology, neurology, and other patients’ bedside. This amounts to a total of 777 new Halloween-themed books being gifted this Halloween season! Additionally, volunteers gave out beautiful and inspirational literary Halloween cards made by local high students (e.g., “ENWITCH your mind by READING” with an illustration of a witch reading! or CARVE some time for reading with an illustration of a carved pumpkin). Patients are so excited to celebrate Halloween, and it’s magical how powerful a wonderful Halloween book can be to inspire reading that wouldn’t otherwise happen!
A huge thank you to everyone who donated and conducted their own book drives to make this all possible: NCL North Tustin for the 183 Halloween books and 186 Halloween cards they donated (thank you Ali, Haley and Kendall Langdon for organizing the book drive); the William P. Gray Legion Lex American Inn of Court for the 83 books they donated (thank you Elia Naqvi for organizing this book drive); the many individual donors who participated in Ethan’s Halloween book drive on Amazon that resulted in hundreds more books arriving in the mail; the Foothill High Schools Ethan & Choco student club for the 64 Halloween cards they made (thank you to club President Eleanor Nguyen); El Dorado High School’s Books 4 CHOC Club for the 50 cards they made (thank you to club President Leila Do); ECBC lead volunteers Cathie James and Anne Case for helping to host our BOO-ks for Treat event; and all of our ECBC bedside readers this month for delivering such fun read-aloud in patient rooms!
This post cannot be complete without mentioning the significance of ECBC’s Halloween book sharing for our Co-Founder Ethan. Just a few days prior to Halloween in 2014, Ethan was diagnosed with Leukemia at 7.5 years old. On October 31st of that year, exactly ten years ago today, Ethan had surgery to insert a port in his chest, he received his first dose of chemo, and he dressed up with his siblings to trick-or-treat at CHOC for candy and other small toys (yet no books to be seen!). And now, 10 years later and a high-school senior, it’s remarkable to witness Ethan’s continued joy in sharing his love of reading as he hands out Halloween-themed books so that patients can also enjoy literary candy!
A huge thank you to NCL North Tustin for hosting a Halloween book drive for ECBC over the past couple of weeks. We just received their donation of 183 Halloween-themed books — a terrific collection of new, high-appeal books for CHOC patients af all ages. NCL members also made beautiful literary-themed Halloween cards, with handwritten messages, to be gifted to patients along with the books. THANK YOU to NCL North Tustin young ladies and families who contributed to this awesome bookraiser — we can’t wait to share these with CHOC kiddos at our upcoming Halloween book give-aways at CHOC! A special shout out to Ali, Haley, and Kendall Langdon for organizing the book drive and collecting + bookplating all of the books at your home! New, high-quality books are expensive — It is efforts like these that keep us going!
We still need about 100 more books for our BOO-ks for Treats Halloween book gifting at CHOC. Please donate a book if you haven’t yet! To donate, go to: bit.ly/Halloweenbooks4ECBC
October is here, and so it’s time for our annual Halloween book drive! ECBC is so excited that our BOO-ks for Treats Halloween book give-away is finally back as part of CHOC’s trick-or-treating event! This event holds a very special place in our organization’s heart, especially ECBC co-founder Ethan’s. Ethan was diagnosed with cancer a few days before Halloween in 2014, and on Halloween day Ethan had his port surgically placed in his chest, started chemotherapy, and also dressed up and went trick-or-treating in the CHOC lobby at dozens of fun booths giving away candy and small toys. A year later, we founded ECBC and then BOO-ks for Treats, so that CHOC patients could also trick-or-treat for literary candy (aka books)! During Covid, we had to deliver Halloween books “reverse trick-or-treating” style, in bags to patient rooms — which was not nearly as fun. So we are thrilled to be back!
Which means that we need a TON of Halloween-themed books for patients of all ages! Spefically, we need about 500 books for the trick-or-treating event, and then another several hundred for our outpatient gifting library carts. Please help us if you can! To donate, you can scan the QR code below or go to bit.ly/Halloweenbooks4ECBC to purchase a book off our Halloween Wish List on Amazon. All books will be sent directly to ECBC and bookplated with donor names. We need books of all types — from board books and picture books to easy chapter books, middle grade chapter books, graphic novels, and teen/young adult fiction. THANK YOU for providing literary joy to kids who are stuck in the hospital on Halloween!
Today, was CHOC’s annual trick-or-treating event for all kids who are inpatient on Halloween. ECBC delivered 225 Halloween bags filled with two books per patient (so, 450 books), with all books being high-quality Halloween-themed and curated by the age and gender of the recipient. Book bags are also being given to kids visiting the ER through the evening of Halloween — hopefully they add some literary cheer on a night that no kid wants to end up in the ER! These 450 books, along with the 357 delivered to CHOC Outpatient last week, amount to more than 800 Halloween books delivered to CHOC patients!
On this day eight years ago, Ethan’s (ECBC’s co-founder) port was surgically placed in his chest and he received his first dose of chemo, beginning his 3.5 years of treatment for Leukemia. On this day, he also dressed up in a Halloween costume with his siblings and trick-or-treated in the hospital lobby. So Halloween at CHOC has always held a special place in our heart, and being able to contribute halloween books to this event is a treat for ECBC as well. THANK YOU to all of our book donors who contributed to our Halloween book drive. A special shout out to Orange Chamber of Commerce, Fenny’s Flowers, Andersen Elementary School, and Brian and Carrie Bullard for your significant contributions! 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!
Yesterday we delivered 357 Halloween books to the Outpatient Infusion Center (OPI) and the Oncology Clinic at CHOC Children’s Hospital. The books included everything from silly lift-the-flap pumpkin books for toddlers to beginning readers, picture books, graphic novels, and chapter books with fun Halloween-themed stories to joke books and creepy nonfiction/fact books for reluctant readers to anthologies of spooky stories and Halloween-themed horror for teens. As such, all toddlers, kids, and teens will get to select a new Halloween book when they visit OPI or clinic. In addition, yesterday and all month our volunteers on the inpatient side of the hospital are reading Halloween-themed books during their bedside reading sessions with Oncology and Neurology patients on the 5th floor. There’s so much terrific children’s Halloween literature, and it’s so fun to share it with CHOC kiddos in October!.
We are looking forward to our even larger Halloween book donation at the end of the week to the inpatient side of CHOC for their annual trick-or-treating event on October 31st. Until then, we are busy preparing 220 Halloween-themed book bags!
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!
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.
