ECBC had so much fun today with the MaxLove Project at the BeSuper Holiday Party at CHOC Children’s Hospital! Kids crafted ornaments, received toys from the amazing student veterans of Saddleback College, met children’s book author Alane Adams and received signed copies of her beautiful “Thief” picture books, and picked out holiday-themed books to keep! And afterwards, we delivered toys and holiday books to the Outpatient Infusion Center—their shelves are stocked with books again! Thank you Child Life at CHOC for hosting us — we are so honored to be able to give back and bring holiday cheer to hospitalized SuperKids!
Tag Archives: MaxLoveProject
Ethan’s Halloween Book Drive Was a Success!
WOW — what a collection of Halloween-themed books we have for our Books for Treats booth tomorrow at CHOC Children’s Hospital! Over the last few weeks, we collected a total of 371 new, high-quality Halloween books of all kinds (board books, picture books, beginning readers, easy chapter books, and middle grade chapter books). Thank you to Arroyo Elementary School for the 156 Halloween books you donated (as well as the additional 44 non-Halloween books you donated this month) — Principal Sheyka, we appreciate your support on social media and on campus so much!
Thank you also to the National League of Young Men Tustin (Class of 2020), and especially Aidan Miller, for the 64 Halloween-themed books that you collected as part of your terrific book drive (230 books total).
And thank you to Once Upon a Storybook for the beautiful display you created in your store this month to support our Halloween book drive, as well as for the 27 Halloween-themed books your customers purchased to donate! And finally, thank you Amazon customers for the 124 books you donated by purchasing off our Halloween Wish List. A special thank you to the following for the significant number of books you donated: Sharon and Tod Paris (56 books), Ashley Netsky (23 books), and Rob and Brooke Lieberman (20 books). We easily made our goal of 250-300 books, and we can’t wait to give these to CHOC patients tomorrow. Thank you everyone for your support!!! 
Thank you NLYM Tustin Class of 2020!
Yesterday Ethan attended the National League of Young Men Tustin Class of 2020’s meeting and received a terrific donation of 230 new books for Ethan & Choco’s Book Club! 65 of these were Halloween books and will be added to our Books for Treats collection for our Halloween event at CHOC tomorrow, and the rest will be added to our lending and gifting libraries (with bookplates on every book indicating that NYLM Tustin is the donor). What a fantastic mix of books of all types your donors chose! Thank you Class of 2020 for this awesome book drive. And a big thank you to Aidan Miller for your awesome job organizing the book drive and introducing Ethan yesterday!! We appreciate this so very much, as these are the kinds of significant donations we’ll need on a regular basis to create a sustainable library at CHOC — a library where half of the books will always need to be replaced because so much will be gifted (due to germs and sanitation rules, patients being discharged, etc). Thank you NYLM!!!
national league of young men
Ethan delivers another Read+Think+Thrive Box to a new Leukemia Warrior
Ethan delivered another Read+Think+Thrive (RTT) Box yesterday at CHOC Children’s Hospital, this time to a 6 1/2 year old boy named Alexander who was just diagnosed with Leukemia this week. The box contained some of our favorite books for first grade boys, including picture books, a beginning reading book, transitional chapter books, a family chapter book read aloud, and a nonfiction book. It also contained a RTT Toolbox with art supplies and Ethan’s RTT Challenge to respond through art to one of the books in the box. And, Ethan enclosed a personal note advising the new Leukemia warrior to “Keep reading” through treatment.
As was the case last month when we delivered a reading box to Carter after he relapsed, Ethan was so proud to be able to deliver Alexander’s book box. Selecting the books, writing the note, carrying the heavy box while he himself is tired due to the effects of steroids this week. He’s glowing as he does it all, knowing so well how much books have helped him get through his own battle.
After this delivery, we decided that we’re going to reach out to CHOC to figure out how to get RTT Boxes in the hands of every newly diagnosed oncology patient at CHOC. This will be another way to get books in the hands of hospitalized kids as we await volunteer approval for our bedside reading program. And it will be putting books in kids hands at a time when they need it most — when they feel the worst, are missing school, and likely have no books with them.
Please stay posted as we work with CHOC to systematically get our Read+Think+Thrive Boxes to every kid who is diagnosed with cancer. And for ways that you can help us do that!
Thank you Girl Scout Troop #3115 for providing our first supply of reading boxes!! 
ECBC Received Its First Gigantic Donation — From Milk & Bookies!
This afternoon, ECBC received a tremendous donation of books from Milk & Bookies, an LA-based organization whose mission is to spread the love of reading to those who can’t afford books of their own. We haven’t yet unpacked the more than 30 boxes and 2000+ new books, but we’re so excited about our partnership with Milk & Bookies and for this significant donation!
For those who are not aware of the dual libraries that ECBC is aiming to build, ECBC is working hard to create both a Lending Library and a Gifting Library. The goal of the Lending Library is to create a comprehensive library collection for kids of all ages and interests, which includes high-quality literature, award winners, and a range of book types and topics so that patients of all ages, reading abilities, and interests can find books that are a good fit for them. We are working hard to obtain the titles that Ethan is featuring in his Book Looks as well as the rest on our Amazon Wish List so that we can have a collection of books that meets everyone’s needs.
That being said, there are always a good number of patients at the hospital who are “in isolation”, meaning they will not be able to visit the Lending Library or check out books from the lending library to their rooms. For these kids, we are building a Gifting Library that contains books to give away so that they also can have books in their daily lives at CHOC. While we can only have new hardcover books in the Lending Library, as well as a maximum of five copies per title, we have fewer restrictions for the Gifting Library (i.e., they can be paperback, we can have many, many copies of a given title). While we still need (and always will need) many many more books for both the Lending and GIfting libraries, these books are such a great start — and they mean that we now officially have a real “Gifting Library”!!
Thank you so much, Milk & Bookies!! 
Please check out the Milk & Bookies Facebook page by clicking here!