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

Tag Archives: KidsHelpingKids


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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.

School-based-Ethan-and-Choco-clubsDownload


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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!


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THANK YOU Hewes Middle School!

THANK YOU to Hewes Middle School families for the 430 new books that you donated to Ethan & Choco’s Book Club! This was Hewes’ second year hosting their own school book drive, and they beat their last year’s total by almost 200 books! (And, this was our third highest- one-time donation from a school, ever!). This fantastic donation included books of all types for patients ages infant through teen/young adult, and it is equivalent to one month of ECBC’s donations to CHOC, so it is so super helpful!

A special thank you to Mrs. Magnusen’s class for winning the class competition by donating the most books, and thank you to Mrs. Wagstaff’s and Ms. Moffat’s classes for also donating significant numbers. And a HUGE thank you to Hewes Leadership teacher Dean Jennings for leading the effort and for the work of the leadership class in promoting the book drive, making promotional posters, and counting and bookplating the books. We appreciate you!


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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!


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Thank you FHS ECBC Club!

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, and along with our usual bedside reading and book give-aways, this week we delivered Valentine cards made by local high school students that shared “love of reading” messages with CHOC patients. THANK YOU to Foothill High School ECBC club for making these beautiful cards at your last club meeting — the patients loved getting personalized cards written by high schoolers!


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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!


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Ethan speaks at TVT

Co-founder Ethan speaks at Tarbut v’ Torah’s (TVT) Lower School, where he shares his story of battling cancer and founding ECBC. This kicked off the book drive that TVT will host next week alongside their school book fair, where the 4th and 5th grade leadership class will try to rally the school to beat their 2019 record of 310 books. ECBC is so grateful for TVT’s annual support since 2016! 


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THANK YOU Andersen Elementary School!

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!


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THANK YOU to these amazing 7th graders!

A HUGE thank you to these eight (one is missing from photo) seventh graders at Grace Lutheran School in Huntington Beach for choosing ECBC for their service spring project for a second year in a row! They ran a terrific school-wide book drive, including hosting a book donation table for a week+ before and after school, making flyers and book collection boxes, creating their own promotional video/commercial to share online, and sorting/counting all of the books. In sum, they collected a total of 217 new books for kids of all ages, which is especially impressive given this school’s super small student population. Also, a huge shout out to Joi Vutpakdi for rallying the kids behind our cause as well as all of her work to help the kids make their book drive a success. And of course, thank you to all the Grace Lutheran families for all of your generous book donations. THANK YOU GRACE LUTHERAN!


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THANK YOU HEWES MIDDLE SCHOOL!

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!