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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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
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 HUGE thank you to Grace Lutheran School for their donation of 200 new, fantastic books of all types, ranging from board books to picture books and chapter books to informational texts, graphic novels and teen literature. ECBC is especially grateful for the hard work of these 6th grade boys, who organized and conducted the school-wide book drive as their spring service project. The boys made flyers to distribute to school families, created their own video/commercial to share with all of the classes, made book collection boxes, ran book collection tables for the 12 day that they held the book drive. This is the first (and only) book donation that we received from a school during the 2020-2021 school year, so we are deeply appreciative. Thank you Grace Lutheran and especially this crew of terrific boys!.
ECBC Co-Founders Ethan and his mom Ali spent the day at the Orange County Children’s Book Festival working hard to raise awareness and collect a few book donations too. It’s hard to believe this is ECBC’s 4th year at the OC Children’s Book Festival!
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:
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:
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.
ECBC is so grateful for having received 22 new terrific books for teens for our gifting library program at CHOC from the Foothill Ehan & Choco Club! More importantly, thank you Taylor Kubaska and Aya McNamee for starting the club this year — this was our first high school club! Hopefully after you graduate, others will follow in your steps as co-presidents, as it is really awesome to receive support at the high school level and to receive book donations that target teens!
If there are other teens out there who are interested in supporting reading for hospitalized kids/teens and starting an Ethan & Choco’s Club at their high school, please email ECBC at Ali@ECbookclub.com.
Thank you Foothill Ethan & Choco Club for your awesome donation, and a huge thank you to Riley and Aya for taking the initiative to found this club!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!!
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!
A BIG shout out to Arroyo Elementary 3rd graders for sending ECBC all these awesome hardcover books with proceeds from your Lemonade War! We appreciate the support so much. And we really needed all these graphic novels!!
