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: ReadThinkThrive


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Thank You Yorba Linda Middle School!

ECBC just received 212 awesome new books from Yorba Linda Middle School! A HUGE thank you to all of the Yorba Linda families who donated! And a special thank you to the ASB students for leading the book drive efforts. ASB created custom book donation boxes for each teacher’s classroom; they made posters with book drive information to display around the school; they further advertised the book drive on YLMS “Bobcat TV”; and they counted, organized, and bookplated all of the books. ASB also added some friendly between-classroom competition into the mix to boost book donations — congratulations to Mrs. Mucho’s classroom for coming in first place with 89 donated books and winning a donut party! And thank you also to ASB teacher Ms. Sundrstum for helping ASB to lead such a successful first book drive for ECBC!  Schools provide the majority of the books for our gifting library, so we are deeply grateful to have a new partner in Yorba Linda Middle School (who has agreed to do this annually)!  Thank you YLMS!


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A New High School ECBC Club!

A new ECBC support club was just started by students at at El Dorado High School in Yorba Linda!  Club founders Leila Do (President), Mialani Tran (VP), and Madi Huang (publicity) titled their club Books for CHOC, and they received 100 student sign-ups at club rush! Similar to the ECBC support club at Foothill High School, this club aims to support the mission of ECBC by helping to provide books and literacy support materials for ECBC’s ongoing programs at CHOC Children’s Hospital. They plan to conduct one fundraiser or book raiser each semester; make holiday cards, care cards, and bookmarks; and help to decorate book donation boxes. And they will offer community service hours for students who participate in their activities. Congratulations Lelia, Mialani, and Madi on your new club; we can’t wait to see what you do!

ECBC is so grateful for the few existing ECBC support clubs, as they help to spread awareness about our cause, assist with the high volume of books ECBC needs for donations each month, and result in wonderful student-created materials (e.g., cards, bookmarks) that are creative and personal. The clubs also provide high school students with impactful leadership opportunities so they are a win-win for all!

If you or a teen you know is interested in starting a club at your own high school, please check out the information/ideas sheet below. Contact Ali at ali@ECbookclub.com to learn more. 

School-based-Ethan-and-Choco-clubsDownload


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Thank you Laguna Road Elementary, and Will!

Thank you Laguna Road Elementary School in Fullerton for conducting a book drive for ECBC alongside their Fall book fair last month. Laguna Road donated 129 new, fantastic books for patients of all ages! A very special shout out to oncology warrior and CHOC patient Will. Will was invited to Laguna Road to share his story, and when asked who which charity he wanted the school to support in honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, he selected collecting books for ECBC! THANK YOU Will for so awesomely advocating for ECBC and making a difference for patients at CHOC!


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BOO-ks for Treats 2023 Was a Success!

ECBC had a BLAST yesterday hosting our annual BOO-ks for Treats at CHOC’s Halloween event! We gave away 428 new Halloween-themed books to costumed patients and their siblings who trick-or-treated at the hospital – -with patientgs having a fantsatic selection to choose from including traditional Halloween stories, Halloween joke books, anthologies of ghost stories, teen horror, spooky comic-style graphic novels, and books of creepy facts! This is a favorite event for ECBC — it’s so fun to be behind the thrill that kiddos (and their parents) express when coming up on our booth and realizing they get to pick out a wonderful book or two to add to their stash of candy and trinkets!

Thank you to everyone who supported our Halloween book drive leading up to BOO-KS for Treats — which requires a large number of specific titles to be collected quite quickly! And a huge shout out to Kera Montoya and Paper Pie for hosting a fundraiser that provided a significant number of books and helped us get to the totals we needed. Thank you also to Foothill High Schools Ethan & Choco Club for making awesome Halloween cards to give to patients as well. We so appreciate our community’s support in making this event happen!


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Monthly Outpatient Delivery!

This week we re-stocked our gifting libraries at CHOC’s Outpateint Infusion Center and the Oncology  Clinic with 455 new books — with several hundred of them being super fun Halloween-themed titles. We still need many more Halloween books for our big BOO-ks for Treats event next week on the inpatient side of the hospital. Please donate if you can! bit.ly/Halloweenbooks4ECBC


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THANK YOU PaperPie

THANK YOU to Paper Pie and Kera Montoya for these awesome 75 new Halloween-themed books! And thank you to everyone who supported Kera’s Cards for a Cause fundraiser which raised the funds for these books! We still need several hundred more Halloween books for our BOO-ls for Treats event at CHOC! Donate at http://bit.ly/Halloweenbooks4ECBC or click on link below.

ECBC_halloween_flyer-UPDATE.23Download


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Halloween Book Drive!

October is here, and so it’s time for our annual Halloween book drive! ECBC is so excited that our BOO-ks for Treats Halloween book give-away is finally back as part of CHOC’s trick-or-treating event! This event holds a very special place in our organization’s heart, especially ECBC co-founder Ethan’s. Ethan was diagnosed with cancer a few days before Halloween in 2014, and on Halloween day Ethan had his port surgically placed in his chest, started chemotherapy, and also dressed up and went trick-or-treating in the CHOC lobby at dozens of fun booths giving away candy and small toys. A year later, we founded ECBC and then BOO-ks for Treats, so that CHOC patients could also trick-or-treat for literary candy (aka books)! During Covid, we had to deliver Halloween books “reverse trick-or-treating” style, in bags to patient rooms — which was not nearly as fun. So we are thrilled to be back!

Which means that we need a TON of Halloween-themed books for patients of all ages! Spefically, we need about 500 books for the trick-or-treating event, and then another several hundred for our outpatient gifting library carts. Please help us if you can! To donate, you can scan the QR code below or go to bit.ly/Halloweenbooks4ECBC to purchase a book off our Halloween Wish List on Amazon. All books will be sent directly to ECBC and bookplated with donor names. We need books of all types — from board books and picture books to easy chapter books, middle grade chapter books, graphic novels, and teen/young adult fiction. THANK YOU for providing literary joy to kids who are stuck in the hospital on Halloween!


bit.ly/Halloweenbooks4ECBC


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THANK YOU Hicks Canyon, Arroyo, and Guin Foss!

THANK YOU to these Tustin Unified School District elementary schools for hosting book drives for ECBC last week: Hicks Canyon, Arroyo, and Guin Foss. All three schools collected books for Ethan & Choco’s Book Club as part of their fall book fairs, and all three schools do this regularly, 1-2 times per year alongside their book fairs. ECBC is currently donating 500-600 new books per month to CHOC patients, and most of these books come from school book drives. So it is a big deal to have “regulars” whom we can count on for incoming books! A special shout out to Hicks Canyon parent Tina Jussal, Guin Foss Librarian (and ECBC Board Member) Susie Alexander, and Arroyo parent Claudia Rounaghi for coordinating your school’s book drive efforts!

Please contact ECBC (ali@ECbookclub.com) if your school would like to partner with ECBC and run your own book drive! There are meaningful ways to involve students as desired, especially if your school’s ASB/leadership class would like to take it on!


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Outpatient Book Delivery Day!

Today was outpatient book delivery day! ECBC re-stocked our gifting cart at CHOC’s Outpatient Infusion Center (OPI) and our mini library at the Oncology Clinic — gifting a total of 500 new books for patients of all ages, infant through teen/young adult. ECBC also delivered 15 Read Think Thrive Bags, our book bags filled with ten new books and book crafting supplies — to be gifted to patients who are newly diagnosed with cancer. This typical outpatient delivery amounts to a cash value of approximately $7500 and wouldn’t be possible without the support of our community via our annual fundraiser and ongoing throughout the year.

Next up: We are going to need a HUGE amount of Halloween-themed books! Please keep an eye out for our Halloween book drive, or consider hosting your own Halloween book drive at your school, business, philanthropy group, or book club!