This weekend, volunteers gathered to assemble 112 Read Think Thrive bags, ECBC’s books bags that are delivered to every patient at CHOC Children’s Hospital in the days or weeks following a new cancer diagnosis. Each zippered canvas bag contains ten new, highly-quality books that are curated by the age and gender of the recipient, a generous stash of art supplies and literary crafting materials (e.g., blank books, blank comic books, blank bookmarks), a “Read Think Thrive Challenge” from Ethan to do a creative response to one of the books in the bag, a handwritten postcard and literary response from a non-cancer “Thrive Buddy” to motivate a creative thinking response to a book, and various other items such as a reading light, bookmark, and our collectible Book Bands. Since we have twelve different age X gender categories of Read Think Thrive Bags with their own age X gender appropriate supplies, assembling 112 bags is quite an undertaking, organizationally and financially! THANK YOU to all the volunteers who came out to help put these together, and a HUGE thank you to Anne Case and Susie Alexander for all your work to pull this day off! And finally, thank you to Eric Tweedt for your ongoing generosity in letting ECBC use your warehouse space for this project (and storing a ton of our books)! We can’t wait to get these book bags into the hands of kids at CHOC and to hopefully inspire regular reading of great literature as part of their battles against cancer.