Ethan & Choco's Book Club

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


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Ethan’s Thank You and Book Request Video – February 2020

Click image to view Ethan’ s February Thank You & Book Request Video

Here’s Ethan’s monthly thank you and book request video for the month of February. This year, each month Ethan is asking for the books that he requested in our initial year of bookraising for ECBC, back in 2016 — when he made a “Book Look video” of a favorite book on each day of the year, for 366 straight days. Please check out this video to learn more. The wish list (CLICK HERE) contains all of the titles that he requested each day of the month in 2016 and now again in 2020, with the number of copies of the title that ECBC still needs. As with all of our wish lists, all books purchased from this list will be sent directly to ECBC. If you’d like to check out the video book review plug that Ethan made four years ago for any of the books on the list, the links to each of the videos are provided below.

Thank you so much for supporting ECBC’s growing programs at CHOC Children’s Hospital!

Link to Amazon “Book Look” Wish List: CLICK HERE

Links to Ethan’s February Book Look video plugs from 2016


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Last day to make a year-end donation!

There’s only one day left of 2019! If you’d like to make a year-end gift to support books and reading for kids at CHOC Children’s Hospital, click HERE to access the PayPal link. Now that ECBC is an IRS approved nonprofit 501(c)(3), all donations are tax deductible (EIN 83-2934289). Your donation in any amount makes a significant difference in contributing to kids’ thrivership through treatment, especially cancer and other life-threatening/life-altering illness. If you have already made a year-end book or monetary donation, THANK YOU!! 


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‘Tis the Season of Holiday Books at CHOC

ECBC had a fun and productive day on Thursday, getting books and reading to CHOC patients in a variety of ways. We teamed up with MaxLove Project for a holiday-themed BeSuper Party in the hospital lobby, where we gave away December holiday-themed books to patients and siblings of all ages. We also delivered books to the Outpatient Infusion Center, re-stocking their shelves with approximately 150 new holiday books. And, per our ongoing bi-weekly inpatient program, ECBC’s expert Bedside Readers read aloud to the Oncology and Neurology patients on the 5th floor while also giving away books to patients in isolation using our mobile book cart. To top it off, we delivered a Read+Think+Thrive Bag to a 17-year old cancer patient. It was so fun to reach so many patients at CHOC, especially with terrific high-quality, holiday-themed literature! This is the first year we’ve been able to provide CHOC kids with holiday books and they have been THRILLED — THANK YOU TO everyone who has been dropping off and sending books to us — — we’ve been overwhelmed by the donations, which are making this season at the hospital that much more

special! #HospitalizedKidsNeedBooksToo #ReadAloudEveryDay #ReadThinkThrive #ThriveAgainstCancer #BedsideReading #BeSuper #ECBC #ReadThruTheHolidays


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Please help ECBC provide books for kids at Miracle Manor’s holiday party!

PLEASE HELP! ECBC just agreed to participate in a new holiday event that is occurring in just a few days, and we’re looking for some support to pull it off! 

On Friday December 6th, Miracle Manor (a home subsidized by Miracles for Kids for 12 low-income CHOC families with critically ill children) will be hosting a holiday event for their families, and ECBC was invited to provide storytime and books for all of the kids! Our goal is to provide two books for each of the approximately thirty children who live at Miracle Manor, with books picked out specially to match the ages, gender, and interests of each child. So, we are in need of some quick donations! You can help in one of these two ways: (1) donate via PayPal by clicking on HERE, or (2) donate a book off an Amazon wish list that ECBC created specifically for Miracle Manor kids (click HERE). Books bought off this list will go directly to ECBC with donor name written on the bookplate. We would SO appreciate your help so that we so we can provide specific titles that these children will be excited to read!

Also, ECBC needs holiday-themed books for our bedside reading program, to gift to patients in isolation, and for our annual holiday book give away event in the CHOC Children’s Hospital lobby. Please click HERE to buy books from this wish list!

THANK YOU for helping CHOC patients and families THRIVE through treatment during the holiday season!


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THANK YOU, BOOK IT! 2019 PARTICIPANTS!

A HUGE thank you to our AWESOME community for joining us last Sunday at Ethan & Choco’s Book Club’s (ECBC) 2nd annual charity run and book drive —BOOK IT! Racing for Reading for Hospitalized Kids! Approximately 400 racers (and nearly 500 total including volunteers, sponsors, vendors, and supporters) came to walk, run, fundraise, book-raise, and make our event an amazing success! The amount of funds raised is still to be determined, but it is looking like we will have a net profit that exceeds our profit from BOOK IT 2018. The book drive component of the event was also super successful: the online pre-event book drive resulted in over 95 hardcover book donations and 132 Read+Think+Thrive book box donations for kids diagnosed with cancer, and the onsite book drive yielded hundreds more new books. What a great (and needed) boost to our Lending and Gifting libraries at CHOC! Beyond the funds and books raised, many made their mark on the Handprint Wall with their book recommendation for the CHOC library, jumped in the bounce house, used the photo booth, spun the big wheel and bought books from Scholastic, met authors and bought signed copies of books, donated purchased books at the ECBC booth, wrote Care Cards to go in oncology kids’ book boxes, had their faces painted and cartoon caricatures drawn, warmed up with CHOCO the CHOC bear mascot, enjoyed the all-you-can-eat pancake and sausage breakfast, participated in the book character costume contest, and raced their hearts out on the beautiful Jeffrey Open Space Trail. It was so fun to see so many doing this in their bright orange “BOOK IT!” shirts and sporting “Run Read Thrive” medals!. Congratulations to top 5K finishers (male winner Timothy Lam, female winner Kaylah Tasser) and to our 10K winners (male – Sam Juliano, female –  Helena Madden), as well as to all age division winners. And congratulations to Costume Contest winners (the Peter Pan family, Elephant & Piggie, and the Harry Potter couple) and to everyone who added to our themed race by sporting literary costumes!

Thank you to Jeffrey Trail Middle School, Irvine Unified School District, and the city of Irvine for providing us with a fantastic location for our event.  Thank you to Caren Ware and Itz About Time for their expertise in course management and timing equipment. My deepest thank you to our Title Sponsor, KOI CBD for stepping up in the final weeks before race day to support our cause (click here to learn more), and a huge thank you to all of our sponsors: Paris Family Trust (T-Shirt Sponsor), Behr Paint (Medals Sponsor), Enderle Center (Handprint Wall Sponsor), Rise Up Foundation (Costume Contest Sponsor), 5 Boroughs Book Club (Double Book Box Sponsor), VOIT Real Estate (Double Book Box Sponsor), Sur West Homes (Book Box Sponsor) and AA Jewel Box, Cancer clothing, Erin Denes/Berkshire Hathaway Realtor, and Adriene Madden/Magic Maple Tree for your in-kind sponsorships. Thank you as well to all of our event partners: Children’s Hospital of Orange County, KidsREAD!, MaxLove Project, PaKua Martial Arts, Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation, American Academy of Pediatrics Orange County Chapter, Orange County Children’s Book Festival, Orange County Public Library Foundation, Orange County Department of Education, Nothing Bundt Cakes, and Creative Parties for Kids. We couldn’t have pulled this off without all of our terrific sponsors and  partners!

Also thank you to MC Andrea Kooiman for providing such an energetic and positive vibe; Master Clawson for leading a super fun warm-up; Emily Frye for all your help with design and artwork; Zov’s for proving the waters; Smart & Final and Sprouts for providing bananas and oranges; Kiwanis Club of Irvine for the all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast; Francie Rosen and Balloons Sound Great for the 1K Fun Run Arch; and Abigail Tweedt for stepping up to sing the National Anthem. Thank you to Scholastic Books for providing terrific titles to sell for the onsite book drive as well as your significant donation of books. Thank you to children’s authors Sheri Fink, Mara James, Derek Taylor Kent, Adriene Madden, Jennifer Gray Olson, Dan Paley, and Suzi Shaffer for joining us with signed copies of your books for the book drive, and thank you to Susie Alexander / Once Upon a Storybook for inviting authors and being a vital part of our cause and events. Thank you to Barry Ackerman, Event Coordinator, who worked tirelessly on many aspects of the event and without whom BOOK IT! would not have been possible. And thank you to the rest of the BOOK IT 2019 planning team for your hard work in the weeks and months leading up to event day — especially Susie Alexander, Sandy Tweedt, Fenny Kokenge, Mary Kay Viscounty, Deb Kennard, David and Danielle Clawson, and Julie Schulman. It was our first year to have a planning team, and as such they helped to secure sponsors, authors, volunteers, and participants — thus expanding our reach in the community. Also, this event would not have happened without the great volunteers who came out to help on race day. Thank you to the Assistance League of Tustin, ECBC’s Bedside Readers, Girl Scout Troop #3115, Nicole Photoglou, Toby and Roger Kuo, Denes family, and Tyler Yang. This event is a big undertaking for our tiny organization, and it truly does take a community to pull it off. You are all so appreciated. 

And finally, thank you to the many individuals and families who came out to help make the event such a success! A special thank you to the awesome 36 participants who signed up for the 10K, which was a new event this year that we hope provides a starting place for growth in future BOOK ITs! Thank you to the many participants (many whom we don’t know) who promoted on social media, recruited more participants  (the “shares” directly resulted in registrations) and called teams together. A huge shout out to our largest teams: Hewes Middle School, Equalizers, Sherwin-Williams/IREM OC, MatchPoint Tennis Academy, Foothill High School, and Arroyo Elementary School.

I sincerely hope that our community views ECBC’s cause as their cause too, benefiting the kids of Orange County who end up in the hospital. With two years of our charity run under our belt, we hope to continue to grow our annual event so that it continues to support our growing reading programs at CHOC, and hopefully someday a sustainable library there as well. THANK YOU FOR “BOOKING IT” FOR READING FOR KIDS AT CHOC CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL! See you back next year for BOOK IT! 2020!

** If you couldn’t make it on race day but would still like to contribute to our annual fundraiser — either because you want to support BOOK IT! directly or as a way to honor childhood cancer awareness month, it’s not too late! The online book drive/fundraising campaign will be running for a month after the event, until October 8, 2019.

TO DONATE ONLINE, CLICK HERE
TO CHECK OUT THE ALBUM OF RACE DAY PHOTOS, CLICK HERE
TO VIEW RACE DAY RESULTS, CLICK HERE
TO VIEW ETHAN’S OPENING WORDS, CLICK HERE
TO VIEW RUNNERS BOOKING IT, CLICK HERE]


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A Productive Day at CHOC

Today ECBC trained a terrific new bedside reader volunteer (Karen Malone Ottoson — so happy to have you on board!); gave away a bunch of new books to toddlers through teens at our Super Book Give-Away alongside MaxLove’s Be Super Party in the CHOC lobby; delivered 125 new books to the Outpatient Infusion Center; conducted bedside reading in oncology and neurology patients’ rooms; and offered patients in isolation books to keep from our mobile Gifting Library Cart. A busy, great day at CHOC for ECBC!

PLEASE help ECBC keep this all this going for Orange County’s hospitalized kids and join us at our 2nd annual charity run — BOOK IT! Racing for Reading for Hospitalized Kids! Race is in 23 days — sign up now!!!

Click HERE to register, donate, and more!


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Join us at BOOK IT! 2019 and race for reading for hospitalized kids!

Please watch Ethan’s video and sign up for BOOK IT! 2019, ECBC’s 2nd Annual Charity Run — Sunday, September 8 at Jeffrey Trails Middle School and Jeffrey Open Space Trail in Irvine…

Click on www.runsignup.com/runreadthrive to register, donate, and more!

BOOK IT is one month from today — we need your support!


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SPONSORS NEEDED FOR BOOK IT #2!

ECBC’s 2nd annual charity run is just 6 weeks away, and we are urgently needing a title sponsor at the $5000 level. Title sponsor receives event naming on the start/finish banner, large logo on t-shirt, website presence, and up to 10 runner registrations. PLEASE share this with family and friends who could be potential sponsors! We also are looking for corporate sponsors ($3500), book box sponsors ($500+) and in-kind sponsors that cover items such as bounce house, photo booth, etc ($250). CLICK HERE for the sponsor form, and CLICK HERE to see which sponsor levels are taken and still needed.

A HUGE thank you to those in our community who have committed to sponsor BOOK IT #2!! Paris Family Trust (T-shirt Sponsor), Behr Paint Company (Medal Sponsor), Enderle Center (Handprint Wall Sponsor), Rise Up Foundation (Costume Contest Sponsor), Voit Real Estate (two Book Box sponsorships), Cancer Clothing (In-Kind), and Erin Denes/Berkshire Hathaway (In-Kind). The success of our event and continuation of our reading programs for hospitalized kids are dependent on your support , so we are hugely grateful.

If you haven’t signed up yet, please CLICK HERE to register. We are currently behind last year’s numbers, yet we need to double them in order to sustain our book and reading programs at CHOC Children’s Hospital! Also, when you register (or if you can’t join us), please consider donating to our virtual book drive (using the same registration link) — which last year was able to provide enough book boxes and books to maintain 6-8 months of our programs. 1K/5k/10K, custom medals and t-shirts for all participants, division winner awards, book character costume contest with prizes, and option to purchase a pancake breakfast. Donate a book or book box online when you register, or bring a new book to the run on race day — and receive a free pancake breakfast!


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JOIN US for BOOK IT 2019!

ECBC’s 2nd annual charity run and book drive is just around the corner, and we need your support in order to sustain/grow our book and reading programs at CHOC Children’s Hospital!

BOOK IT! Racing for Reading of Hospitalized Kids will be on Sunday, September 8th at Jeffrey Trails Middle School and Jeffrey Open Space Trail! You can help in one or more of these four ways:

  1. Register to run in the 5K, 10K or 1K Fun Run. All runners receive a custom BOOK IT! T-shirt, medal, and electronic timing results. Sign up easily at www.runsignup.com/runreadthrive
  2. Contribute to our online book drive by donating $20 for a new hardcover book for ECBC’s lending library or $100 for a book box for children at CHOC who are newly diagnosed with cancer. Online and onsite book donors will receive a ticket for a free pancake breakfast at the race. Click HERE to donate online.
  3. Be a BOOK IT! Sponsor! We need sponsorships at all levels, including T-Shirt Sponsor, Medal Sponsor, and Title Sponsor. Click HERE to check out the enclosed Sponsor Form for the variety of sponsor levels,; all sponsors will receive name or logo recognition on the BOOK IT! t-shirt. Email Ali@ECbookclub.com for more information.
  4. SHARE this post or the BOOK IT! registration link — www.runsignup.com/runreadthrive. Last year we had almost 500 participants, and we are aiming to double the turnout this year to meet the needs of our growing programs. Please help us expand our community of supporters!

BOOK IT! Is currently our primary means of fundraising and bookraising! We need all the support we can get so that we can continue to help hospitalized kids thrive through treatment with the help of books and reading. THANK YOU! 


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Ethan’s June Most Wanted Books Video

Here is Ethan’s MOST WANTED BOOKS video for the month of June — which is a plea for book donations in an area of great need for ECBC. In this video, Ethan asks for three areas of books that he has already asked for earlier this year — graphic novels, board books, and Spanish language books — because our supply of all three of these is always so low. Please check out his video and consider donating. Books can be purchased and sent directly to Ethan & Choco’s Book Club by clicking on these links to the wish lists on Amazon:

Click on image to view Ethan’s June Most Wanted Books Video

Thank you so much for supporting ECBC’s book and reading programs for hospitalized kids!


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A Successful Afternoon at CHOC Getting Books and Reading to Patients!

While ECBC is at CHOC Children’s Hospital weekly reading and delivering books to oncology and neurology patients, our lobby book-give away events and Outpatient Infusion Center (OPI) deliveries happen on a monthly basis. So yesterday was our day of the month to do all three. First we delivered approximately 125 new books to the OPI, restocking their otherwise empty shelves; then we gave away books from our mobile Gifting Library Cart alongside MaxLove Project in the CHOC lobby, and finally we ended the afternoon by reading aloud to patients in their rooms on the 5th floor (and delivering books to patients in isolation). These days — where we do all three back-to-back– are always so rewarding as we are able to reach patients in multiple areas of the hospital. Yesterday’s highlight: Our Bedside Reader reported that a two-year-old patient wanted seven books to be read aloud, asking that everyone in the room sit down on the floor to listen! It’s so wonderful to hear these stories of reading aloud and good literature making an impact on children’s lives at CHOC!


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Thank you Troop #3244 for your amazing “Book Drive & Thrive Party”!

This week, Girl Scout Troop 3244 hosted an AWESOME support event to raise awareness and funds/supplies for ECBC’s Read+Think+Thrive Box program for kids who are diagnosed with cancer. This event, which the troop fully funded and organized, included:

  • A new book drive, with a children’s book off our book box wish list as the admission ticket
  • Stations to create items for our book boxes, such as bookmark decorating and box decorating
  • Stations that celebrate books and reading, including storytime, book inspired food crafting and treat, and a game station.
  • Guest speaker Ethan who was invited to share his story of founding ECBC
  • An ECBC patch for all Girl and Boy Scouts who attend

The girls also did a tremendous amount of preparation for their event, including formulating plans for the event and the activities at each station, making a book donation box, designing a flyer for advertising, making samples and signs decor for each station, distributing flyers to their community, designing and official patch for the event, various pre-event meetings to assign roles and cover all necessary. A tremendous group effort indeed!

The troop’s event resulted in the following donations:

  • 115+ new books from ECBC’s wish lists for our book boxes
  • $110 in donations for art supplies for the book boxes
  • 21 awesomely decorated book boxes
  • 35 laminated youth-made reading themed bookmarks
  • A girl scout/boy scout patch design for future scout events supporting ECBC, plus a donation of 50 patches to ECBC

What an absolutely terrific model this troop created for other girl scouts or philanthropic groups to use to support our book box program! THANK YOU to this terrific troop, and their amazing leader Jill Pang, for your hard work on this the las few months and for choosing ECBC for your Bronze Award project! We so appreciate you, and especially your creativity and inititiative in designing a new way to support our program — which helps our infant charity grow as an organization!

If your group is interested in hosting their own Book Drive & Thrive Party to support our Read+Think+Thrive Box program, please contact us at Ali@ECbookclub.com.


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It has been a Full Year of Bedside Reading at CHOC Children’s!

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of ECBC”s bedside reading and mobile book cart program at CHOC Children’s Hospital! Before we launched our inpatient program on May 24, 2018, it was rare to see a book or reading happening on a patient floor. Now, patients are regularly being read high-quality literature, and patients in isolation, who are not able to access available books in the hospital lobby, are able to choose books to keep from our mobile book cart. While the year 1 data have not yet been analyzed, our bedside reader volunteers report that, generally speaking, the patients are giving more “yes”s to reading than “no'”s, they are engaged during read-alouds, and they are asking volunteers to stay longer and read more. Which is so much better than we expected when we launched this program (especially knowing that reading can be a hard sell against technology). We can’t wait to formally analyze data from our first year and share the results!

A huge thank you to the most awesome bedside reading team I can imagine. We have an awesome group of current and former educators, librarians, school psychologists, and reading specialists — and they are a large reason why we are getting such a terrific response from the children! I’m so grateful for this team!

As we head into year 2, we will be working on growing this program so that we can offer reading aloud to patients on more hospital floors and more days of the week, with the ultimate goal to be able to offer every available patient a read aloud every day of the week (which is consistent with the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendation of at least 15 minutes a day of reading). We will be looking to recruit new volunteers, particularly those with prior experience in education/literacy — please email at Ali@ECbookclub.com if you are interested in learning more about becoming a bedside reader.


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An Awesome Girl Scout Silver Award Project…and Successful Mini Book Box Packaging Day!

A HUGE thank you to 7th graders Morgan, Sam, and Delaney for choosing to support ECBC’s Read+Think+Thrive (RTT) Box program for their Girl Scout Silver Award project!

Theses three girls, who are part of Girl Scout Troop #2908, fundraised, book-raised, and contributed many hours to be able to fund and assemble fifteen RTT Boxes for middle school-aged kids at CHOC Children’s Hospital who are diagnosed with cancer (10 girl boxes, 5 boy boxes). 

In the months leading up to their packaging day, the girls worked super hard. They set up their own online book drive to collect needed titles for middle school boxes. They made a promotional video, shared it on social media, linked it to their own Amazon wish list of books, and collected and kept track of book titles that were sent to them. They also fundraised and raised $900 to go towards purchasing books as well as the art supplies that go in each box. In addition, they (1)  beautifully decorated eight sides and flaps of each of 15 boxes with ECBC-themed quotes and artwork; (2) completed Thrive Buddy responses by creatively responding to a book in each box to help motivate box recipients to participate in Ethan’s Read+Think+Thrive Challenge; and (3) designed and made their own reading-themed laminated bookmarks to add in each box as gifts specifically from them. 

This week, after months of hard work (and surpassing the Mini Box Packaging Day requirement of providing funds/materials for at least 10 boxes), the girls gathered to pack the15 boxes they funded. In two hours, they assembled and taped the boxes; added bookplates to books with donor names; wrote personalized “Care Cards” with notes to recipients and packaged the cards in baggies with two ECBC Book Bands; assembled packets of ECBC promotional materials; and packed all 15 boxes with the variety of items they collected and created. Reading lights were added as well — Thanks to Max Stahl for funding these as part of his 8th grade community service project! After the two hours were done, 15 beautifully decorated boxes filled with high-quality books and a variety of other reading-related treats were ready to go! THANK YOU Morgan, Sam, and Delaney for your initiative, creativity, hard work, and commitment to this project —- we appreciate your support so much!

Click HERE to check out Ethan’s 20 second time-lapse video of 2/3 of the 2 hour box packaging session!

Time-lapse video of some the girls’ packaging sessions!

We’re excited to now have a great supply of middle school boxes ready to go! We need an equal number of boxes for all other age groups (infant/toddler, preschool, early elementary, upper elementary, high school). If there’s a youth or philanthropic group out there who’s interested in working on a mini-packaging day for your group (minimum requirement is to fundraise and/or book-raise to cover 10 boxes — about $1000), please get in touch by emailing Ali@ECbookclub.com! 


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Girl Scout Troop #3115 Engages in Some Fantastic Awareness Raising for ECBC!

Last Sunday, Girl Scout Troop #3115 participated in the 2019 Girl Scout Day of Service at Foothill High School. With more than 600 Girl Scouts and 200 adults in attendance, the girls spent the afternoon sharing with others ECBC’s cause and ways they can help support. They focused on our book box program (“Read+Think+Thrive Boxes) for kids newly diagnosed with cancer, as they have been focused on helping ECBC build this specific program for over three years. Using terrific visuals that they made, the girls shared information about what a book box is; how other youth can become a “Thrive Buddy” by responding to a creative reading prompt that gets included in a box, and how ECBC’s “Book Band” reading incentive program works at the hospital. They also came up with the idea to package ECBC’s Book Bands for the book boxes into baggies with personalized “Care Cards” — and they made this an activity for other scouts to participate in while visiting their booth. Finally, they distributed flyers about two upcoming events — our second annual BOOK IT! on September 8th (click here to register) and Girl Scout Troop #3244’s Book Drive and Thrive Party on June 8th (click here to learn more and register).

We are so grateful to Troop #3115’s longstanding commitment to ECBC — these girls (and their troop leaders) have been truly awesome partners!


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Ethan’s April Most Wanted Books Video

Here is Ethan’s MOST WANTED BOOKS video for the month of April — which is a plea for book donations in an area of great need for ECBC. In this video, Ethan’s asks for wordless picture books. Please check out his video and consider donating. Books can be purchased and sent directly to Ethan & Choco’s Book Club by clicking HERE to access the wish list on Amazon.

We also still REALLY NEED books for teens and young adults (March’s Most Wanted book type), board books (February’s Most Wanted book type), and Spanish language books (January’s Most Wanted book type). You can access these wish list by clicking on these links:
– ECBC Special Need Wish List: Spanish Books
– ECBC Special Need Wish List: Board Books
— ECBC Special Need Wish List: Teen/Young Adult Books

*Please keep in mind that we will ALWAYS need hardcover and paperback books for our permanent Lending Library and our special situations (including patients in isolation) Gifting Libraries at CHOC. The link to our General Wish List for our hospital libraries is ECBC’s General Wish List.

Thank you for supporting ECBC’s book and reading programs for hospitalized kids!


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Thank you Anna!

A HUGE thank you to Anna Joelson for collecting all these amazing books as part of your 7th birthday celebration! So many great titles — from board books and beginning readers to picture books and chapter books — that will contribute to both our Gifting and Lending Libraries! Thank you for sharing some of your birthday love with ECBC. We appreciate your support so very much!


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Thank You Max!

A huge thank you to Max Stahl for choosing to support ECBC for his school’s 8th Grade Community Project! A middle schooler in El Segundo, Max has been working on collecting books and funds for ECBC in various ways. He set up a book drive at his old elementary school’s book fair, placed a collection box outside of his home to collect more books within his neighborhood, collected funds by running a GoFundMe campaign, and started his own book review blog with an associated wish list on Amazon so his blog readers could purchase books to donate. An impressively comprehensive effort for one eight grader!

In total, Max’s book-raising and fundraising resulted in 144 new, high-quality books for ECBC’s Lending Library, Gifting Library, and Read+Think+Thrive Boxes for kids newly diagnosed with cancer (with a focus on allocating his funds to purchasing books for book boxes for middle- and high-schoolers). Also, Max used some of the funds to purchase 100 reading lights, which will be added to older’ kids’ Read+Think+Thrive Boxes.

Even though Max has completed his school project, he plans to continue writing his book review blog and collecting book donations through that. ECBC supporters, this is a thoughtful, well-written blog by a smart avid teen reader…CLICK HERE to check it out, and CLICK HERE to access Max’s Wish List. All titles that Max reviews and asks for via his wish list would make for fantastic donations to ECBC’s library collections!

Thank you Max for your hard work, terrific contribution, and your plan to continue to support ECBC beyond school or any formal requirements!!


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Thank You to Two Tustin Elementary Schools

A huge thank you to Loma Vista Elementary School and Myford Elementary School for the your awesome book donations last week. Both schools conducted school-wide book drives alongside existing book purchasing programs. Organized by Loma Vista parent Beth Feher, Loma Vista conducted a book drive at their school’s Scholastic Book Fair and as part of their Read Across America celebrations. With the amazing help of first grader Jayden Salazar, Loma Vista collected and donated 260 new books to ECBC — returning our book donation box completely full! (not a small accomplishment –the box is huge!).

And, spearheaded by kindergarten teacher Danielle Clawson, Myford collected book donations via students’ Scholastic Book Club orders, where parents were given the opportunity to purchase additional books to donate to ECBC as part of their child’s book order. Thank you Danielle and Myford for the 80 books that you donated as a result of this book drive, and also for your ongoing support of ECBC through Scholastic Book Club orders.

School book drives are the largest source of ECBC’s gifting library. Since 100% of our gifting library books are given away (to kids in isolation at CHOC, at hospital book-give away events, in book boxes for new cancer diagnoses), ECBC depends on the support of local schools to sustain our gifting book programs. If your school is interested in collecting new books for ECBC, please contact us at ali@ECbookclub.com

THANK YOU LOMA VISTA ELEMENTARY AND MYFORD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL!