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
Thank you Hewes Highlanders for your wonderful donation of 235 books — which included books in every category that we need from board books and picture books to beginning readers and chapter books to nonfiction, graphic novels, novels for teens, poetry, and Spanish language books. A special shout out to Mrs Turner’s class for collecting the most books and winning the donut party!
It is worth noting that this is the FIRST book drive we’ve had in the seven years we’ve been doing this that the number of books that we count (and re-count) on our end is HIGHER than the number of books we were told by the group! Also, we only had to exclude ONE book that was clearly used, BY FAR the fewest % of used books we’ve received in a school donation. ASB, you must have done an awesome job communicating in your class presentations the importance of new books only!
THANK YOU Hewes Leadership class for organizing this effort, Mr. Jennings for rallying your class behind our cause and all your work behind the scenes, and the Hewes Community for helping ECBC to provide books and reading for Orange County’s hospitalized kids!
A HUGE thank you to Kristin Chahbazian/Studio 17 for her super generous donation to ECBC! Recently, Kristin hosted a book drive at her Tustin-based salon where she asked her clients to donate books in lieu of giving her a monetary tip. Her amazing clients donated a total of 91 new books — mostly all popular, high-interest titles! What an amazing way to inspire community to support our cause — by turning her usual monetary tips into books for kids at CHOC Children’s Hospital! We are so very grateful for Kristin’s philanthropic heart!
Yesterday was our monthly book re-stocking day at CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center and Oncology Clinic. We delivered 350 new books — one of our largest donations ever in a single day! Kids now know that when they visit CHOC’s cancer clinic or the infusion center for an outpatient treatment, they get to pick a new book to keep. And some are even requesting specific titles to be there for their next visit!
To help ECBC continue to provide books and reading to oncology (and other) patients at CHOC, you can purchase a book to donate from our Amazon Wish List, which will be sent directly to ECBC (and bookplated with your name on it). Click HERE to access the wish list and donate.
A HUGE THANK YOU to Dr. Baum and Baum Squad patients for collecting books for Ethan & Choco’s Book Club! We are so happy to partnering with you again and for your ongoing support…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!
Thank you to Elise Joseph and her friends for dedicating your last book club meeting to being Thrive Buddies for kids at CHOC who are recently diagnosed with cancer. Each of your book-inspired artwork and Thrive Buddy postcard will go in a Read Think Thrive Bag to inspire new oncology warriors to read and respond creatively to a fun book — which helps contribute to cognitive health and thrivership through treatment! THANK YOU GIRLS, and thank you for each donating a copy of the book! If others would like to involve their youth groups (i.e., classrooms, book clubs, Girl Scouts) in this activity, please e-mail at Ali@ECbookclub.com and we will provide instruction/materials.
A HUGE thank you to Rossmoor Elementary School for donating 531 NEW BOOKS to Ethan & Choco’s Book Club! This terrific school has a Harry Potter style house system for Knights — where the four Knight houses are engaged in friendly competition in academic and non-academic areas throughout the year, including philanthropic support of the community. What a wonderful way to create school community and motivate students! ECBC was so fortunate to be the recipient of their most recent community outreach project, where donation boxes were put out at the school for each of the Knight houses, and students purchased books to contribute by either ordering off an ECBC-provided Amazon wish list or buying books at their school book fair. We are blown away by the response, which amounts to the largest single book donation from a school that we have received and will provide 2-3 months of books for our inpatient and outpatient programs at CHOC Children’s Hospital. Congrats to House of Lancelot for contributing the most books at more than 200 new books donated!
THANK YOU Rossmoor families for rallying behind our cause. Thank you also to Kristin Moushon for thinking of ECBC and connecting us with your school. And, a special thank you to Rossmoor Principal Amy Coltey for your commitment to making community outreach part of your school’s culture and for all you did to make this book drive a great success! Go Knights!
THANK YOU Guin Foss Elementary for donating to ECBC last week at your book fair. 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 Susie Alexander for your help organizing the book drive!
THANK YOU so much to Arroyo Elementary School for hosting a book drive for ECBC alongside your school book fair last week. And thank you to the Arroyo families who donated many awesome books!! all books will go directly to patients at CHOC Children’s Hospital who are battling cancer and other life-altering illnesses. A special shout out to Danielle Burton for coordinating the book drive!
Today we re-stocked our mini-libraries at CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center (OPI) and CHOC’s Oncology Clinic. 215 new, high-quality books for patients of all ages were delivered, so that patients can select a book to read when they visit for a chemo infusion or other oncology care. Also, we brought sixteen more Read Think Thrive Bags which are delivered to kids as they are diagnosed with cancer (valued at ~$150 per bag) — which means many new diagnoses the past few weeks. Since these bags contain enough books to take kids through the initial months of diagnosis (+ art supplies and a “Read Think Thrive Challenge” from Ethan), we are grateful that ECBC can support kids’ cognitive health and thrivership during a time where this critical aspect of their development is so often neglected.
If you’d like to help ECBC sustain these book gifting programs, you can:
Visit Arvida Book Coin Old Towne Tustin to purhcase a book to donate (they have a box for donations)
Purchase a book from ECBC’s wish list on Amazon. All books purchased from this list will be sent directly to ECBC and bookplated with donor name: CLICK HERE.
Make a monetary donation that will go directly toward purchasing needed books for patients at CHOC Children’s Hospital (mostly oncology and neurology patients, as well as others battling life-altering illness). CLICK HERE.
THANK YOU for helping ECBC help hospitalized kids to thrive with the help of books and reading!
We are so excited that the December holiday book drive at Arvida has turned into a regular thing! Arvida now has a book donation box for ECBC, so you can visit the store to purchase a children’s book to donate — as well as enjoy everything else the store has to offer, including a terrific selection of used and new adult books, locally made gifts and art , wonderful coffee, cozy seating and tables with chess games, and numerous in-person events such as book clubs and writers’ workshops. Purchasing a book here to donate is a win-win for ECBC, Arvida, CHOC Children’s Hospital, and our community! Bookplates are available at the store for donors to write in their name. Please remember that all books purchased for ECBC must be brand new!
Today we re-stocked our mini libraries at CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center and the Oncology Clinic — 310 new books for infants through young adults.
We rarely get to see the recipients of the books on the outpatient side of the hospital, so we really appreciate it when we receive pictures like this. This awesome Leukemia warrior William’s favorite part about visiting OPI is to receive a book at each visit. Keeping reading and thriving through treatment William!
To donate a book for our inpatient and outpatient book gifting at CHOC, please CLICK HERE. All books donated will be bookplated with donor name.
Despite the continued challenges of these extraordinary times, including not being able to have our annual in-person fundraiser for a second year, we were able to support ECBC’s mission in many ways in 2021. We built our oncology outpatient book gifting programs to be stronger than ever, giving away 200-300 books per month. We finally figured out how to successfully give a Read Think Thrive Bag to every child at CHOC as they are diagnosed with cancer — which amounted to 180 new diagnoses and bags delivered in 2021 (valued at $120-$150/bag). We continued to give away holiday-themed books for Halloween and December-themed holidays, although book delivery still looked different per Covid-altered protocol. Additionally, we launched our new virtual book club for teen cancer patients and survivors, with book selections and discussion curated by ECBC co-founder Ethan. AND, the best news of all is that we were one of few volunteer programs to be given the green light to resume our inpatient volunteer-dependent bedside reading and mobile book cart program as of this past October. It has been so great to be back reading aloud and book talking with the kids at CHOC!
Going forward in 2022, ECBC plans to continue to promote hospitalized kids’ cognitive health and thrivership by:
Re-building and growing our inpatient reading programs to more expert reader volunteers, more days per week, more patient floors, and greater impact on kids’ thrivership during their hospital stays.
Sustaining our various book gifting programs — including our Read Think Thrive Bags for patients as they are diagnosed with cancer; our gifting libraries at CHOC’s Oncology Clinic and the Outpatient Infusion Center so that every child visiting the clinic or OPI can select a high-quality book to keep; and our holiday book gifting such as BOO-ks for Treats at Halloween and our December holiday book gifting.
Recruiting more teens and young adults to join Teens Thrive Reading Group (TTRG), our new virtual book club for teen cancer warriors that includes gifting Kindles and monthly Kindle books to participants. As this is a virtual program that is not hospital dependent, we are hoping to expand TTRG beyond CHOC to include oncology teens from around the country.
Developing ways to provide parents with information and resources to help them optimally support their kids’ cognitive health and thrivership through treatment with books and reading. The hope is that this can include online methods as well as eventual in-person group sessions with parents during hospital stays.
Bringing our annual fundraiser (BOOK IT!) back to an in-person charity run/walk and book drive! Our fingers are crossed hard that we can host our onsite event this year — which raises the majority of the funds that we need to run our programs. Please save the date — Labor Day, Monday September 5 2022!
Thank you to our awesome bedside readers who are back at it despite the challenges that come with visiting a children’s hospital in the middle of a pandemic. And a special thank you to ECBC’s Board of Directors — I am deeply grateful for the commitment and contributions of each of you. And a HUGE thank you to our amazing community for supporting ECBC during this especially difficult time — every monetary donation, book donation, book drive, and social media shout-out has mattered and we are deeply grateful.
To start off 2022 with a one-time or recurring monetary donation, please CLICK HERE.
If you haven’t donated to Ethan & Choco’s Book Club yet this year and are looking to make an end-of-year gift before January 1, you can still do so now! Most of ECBC’s programs have returned do their pre-Covid levels of operation, and all donations will go directly towards helping hospitalized kids (especially kids battling cancer and other life-altering conditions) thrive through treatment with high-quality books and read-aloud experiences. For example, it may buy a book for a child who is inpatient on the oncology floor; or it may provide a book bag containing a mini-library of age and gender appropriate literature for a child just recently diagnosed with cancer; or it may fund a Kindle and Kindle books for a teenage oncology warrior. All donations are tax-dedictible, and donors are acknowledged on the items they fund. You can CLICK HERE to donate: Please email Ali@ECbookclub.com for a donation receipt. #endofyeargift #ECBC #readthinkthrive #thriveagainstcancer #cognitivehealth
ECBC was so thrilled to be able to deliver holiday book bags this week to CHOC patients and siblings living at Miracle Manor (Miracles for Kids’ subsidized housing for CHOC families). This was our third year gifting holiday books to Miracle Manor families, and while we missed not being able to host storytime with Santa or give the books to the kids directly, it is such a treat to be able to provide books that were curated according to every recipient’s specific age and interest. We gifted a Santa alphabet book, Christmas-themed princess books, holiday-themed popular graphic novels, JK Rowling’s new Christmas Pig and RIck Riordan’s newest book for a Percy Jackson fan, holiday drawing books, fancy encyclopedias about motorcross and Marvel Superheroes — and so much more! THANK YOU to all our holiday book donors, most of whom donate books on an ongoing basis which allows us to keep on helping hospitalized kids to thrive with books and reading!
A huge THANK YOU to Fairmont Private School North Tustin Campus for your donation of 139 books—all great, high-demand titles! A great success for a small school of only 300 students! And thank you Tina Jussal for coordinating the book drive! We are so grateful for your support! And even more grateful to learn that Fairmont wants to support us every year! (We need more Thrive Partner schools who support us annually). #schoolbookdrive #thrivepartnerschool #kidshelpingkids #readthinkthrive #thriveagainstcancer #cognitivehealth
A huge THANK YOU to the CarterStrongForever community for yet another amazing book drive! We just received 121 awesome books that were donated in honor of Carter — all selected from a specially curated list of books n memory of Carter because of their themes of kindness, humor, baseball, and superheros. CarterStrong bookplates have been affixed to all books, and we can’t wait to get these amazing titles into patients’ hands! Thank you Jamie and CarterStrongForever family and friends for your ongoing support and for allowing ECBC to play a small role in helping to keep Carter’s impact going strong.
Today, we delivered a TON (244, to be exact) of new December holiday-themed books to our mini-libraries at CHOC Children’s Outpatient Infusion (OPI) Center and CHOC’s Oncology Clinic! This allows all patients who visit the oncology clinic or OPI in the next few weeks to pick out a terrific holiday book — with choices ranging from lift-the-flap board books to Christmas- and other-holiday themed picture books to holiday-themed graphic novels, joke books, and chapter books for middle graders as well as teens and young adults. We also re-stocked our inventory of Read Think Thrive Bags for kids who are diagnosed with cancer.
We are STILL in need of more holiday-themed books to be able to offer them to kids on the oncology and neurology floor on the inpatient side in the coming weeks! If you would like to donate a book, please CLICK HERE to access our amazon wish list. All books will be sent directly to ECBC, and bookplates will be added with donor names.
THANK YOU for helping hospitalized kids thrive through the holidays with books and reading!
With the start of December, ECBC began our holiday-themed book gifting to kids who are on the inpatient side of the hospital at CHOC. ECBC volunteers are wheeling around our gifting library cart (see below) to offer patients age-appropriate Christmas and other December holiday themed books — from Christmas-themed board books, picture books, joke books and graphic novels to contemporary holiday-themed fiction for teens and young adults. Since our volunteers were not allowed in the hospital last year due to COVID restrictions, we weren’t able to personally deliver any books to kids on the inpatient side. It’s so wonderful to be back to offering the kids choice and variety, which let’s them select based on their needs and interests!
We have enough holiday books to get us through this week, but we still need many more (for all book types and ages) to get us through the month and to also to give to kids who visit Outpatient Oncology, the Outpatient Infusion Center, and kids living at Miracle Manor (Miracles for Kids’ subsidized housing for CHOC families). To donate, please visit our December holiday wish list on Amazon by CLICKING HERE. You can also donate a new holiday book by visiting Arvida Book Co in Tustin and buying a book to put in their donation box.
THANK YOU for helping ECBC to help hospitalized kids thrive through the holidays with books and reading!
Thank you TVT Lower School for hosting a book drive for ECBC again this year alongisde your school book fair! The book drive was a great success, with TVT students donating 266 terrific new books spanning all of the categories we need and including many high-demand titles. Thank you to the 5th graders for their hard work in promoting the book drive, and thank you to the team of parents who helped to coordinate it (Nuriya Ismagilova, Galina Kerenskaya, Christine Groner, Jessica Ardo, Andrea Katz). And a special thank you to TVT student and Leukemia survivor Liam Katz for delivering the books to us again this year!
We are so grateful for TVT for their annual support since ECBC’s first year of bookraising in 2016. Each year they have held tremendous book drives that are promoted by the students and that result in 200+ books — having raised well over 1000 books over the past five years. THANK YOU TVT for continuing to be a thrive partner school and being such an amazing model for how kids and schools can make a difference for other kids in our community!
A big THANK YOU to Arvida Book Co and the Jack & Jill Guild of CHOC Children’s Hospital for a successful “Happy Hour Book Drive” yesterday at Arvida! In just a couple hours, 108 awesome new books were donated, including many holiday-themed books that will get delivered to patients over the next few weeks. A special shout out to Hoppy Meyer for her work coordinating the event. And a huge thank you to Arvida owners Sam and Mike for partnering with ECBC to help provide books for patients at CHOC!
Arvida will be collecting book donations throughout December, so please stop by the store if you can to purchase a new book to donate! It’s a huge win-win for all as you will also be supporting a truly awesome local Tustin independent bookstore with new and used books, a very cool coffee bar with terrific coffee, and cozy seating to hang and read and chat!
THANK YOU for your support in helping hospitalized kids to thrive through the holidays with books and reading!#holidaybookdrive #arvidabookco #ECBC #readthinkthrive #thrivingthrutheholidays #thriveagainstcancer #cognitivehealth
