Thank you to Canyon High School for your recent donation of 116 new books, and a big thank you to Canyon’s Babysitters Club for their great efforts in organizing a book drive at their school! The Babysitters Club promoted the book drive, made nine colorful donation boxes to place around campus, worked with teachers to set up incentives, and organized and delivered the books. We can’t wait to get these awesome books to patients at CHOC next week!
Thank you to El Dorado High School (Placentia, CA) for your awesome donation this month of 162 new books and monetary donation of $360! And a special thank you to EDHS’s Books 4 CHOC Club led by President Leila Do for all of your hard work in leading the book drive as well as the fundraiser at Handel’s. You collected a terrific bunch of high quality books for patients of all ages, including many of our most needed book types such as board books, graphic novels, and beginning reading books. This was Books 4 CHOC’s first year in existence since they founded their club in the fall of 2023, and they have had a productive first year of making literacy support items (i.e., bookmarks, literary-themed holiday cards) as well as hosting book drives and fundraisers. THANK YOU Books 4 CHOC!
If you are a high school student and interested in starting your own high school support club for ECBC and Orange County’s hospitalized kids, please send an email to ali@ECbookclub.com. Founding and running a club can be a great way to support your local community as well as gain impactful leadership experience!
THANK YOU Hicks Canyon Elementary School PTA and families for hosting another book drive for ECBC and for your donation this week of 77 new books. The donation included ALL wonderful high-interest titles, including many graphic novels which we really need. Hicks Canyon conduced the book drive alongside their school’s book fair, which works so well for elementary schools since parents are visiting the fair anyway to purchase books for their kids and teachers (and schools usually benefit in the form of Scholastic points from the increased sales).
This was Hicks’ second book drive of the school year to benefit ECBC — resulting in a total of 164 new books during the 2023-2024 school year. Hicks is one of ECBC’s few “regular” donors (aka “Thrive Partner Schools”). We so appreciate our Thrive Partner Schools as they provide passive book income that we can count on — which our tiny nonprofit very much needs. A special thank you to Tina Jussal for making this (and every) Hicks book drive happen!
ECBC received a couple of donations this month from two high school Ethan & Choco Clubs. Both clubs are run by student leaders, so all club activities are fully organized and implemented by high schoolers. Thank you to the Foothill High School ECBC club for holding a book drive —which involved making posters and donation boxes, promoting on social media, and coordinating collection sites with English teachers. The Foothill club donated over 100 books, with Ms Womack Williams’ class donating the most and winning the club’s promised donut party!
Thank you also to the ECBC club at El Dorado High (called Books for CHOC) for the bookmarks you donated last week. They are beautiful and literary-themed, and we can’t wait to share them with patients next month!
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 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 at the start of the 2024-2025 school year, please check out the information/ideas sheet below. Contact Ali at ali@ECbookclub.com to learn more.
THANK YOU to Tarbut V’Torah (TVT) Community Day School’s Lower Campus for conducting another AWESOME book drive for ECBC alongside your school’s book fair! TVT donated a total 397 new books in literally every category that we need them, and as usual they are all terrific highly popular titles. TVT has always used friendly competition to boost student participation, and this year they had a different twist: Every class that donates 25 books would receive an ice cream party, and the grade level to donate the most books also would receive a lunch party. What a brilliantly inclusive way to structure the competition! Congratulations to the 4th graders for donating the most books!
A special shout-out to the Leadership class for promoting the book drive by making posters to put around campus. And thank you to Kimberly Lee and Leigh Choueke for all your work in helping to coordinate the book drive. And thank you TVT for providing fun incentives! This is the SEVENTH year that TVT has conducted a book drive for ECBC — collecting anywhere between 200 to 1000+ books for us each year and a total of 2625 books across the years. TVT, you have made a difference in the success of our tiny non-profit! We are so very grateful for this partnership.
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!
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!
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!
THANK YOU Salem Lutheran School for hosting a book drive last month and for donating 104 fantastic new books! Graphic novels are in huge demand at the hospital and we need to purchase them monthly, so getting a ton is a big plus!). We appreciate your support so much!
Thank you to Peters Canyon Elementary teacher Elise Hong and her 5th grade class for conducting an impromptu book drive for ECBC in the final two weeks of school! Elise and her students decorated a book donation box, made posters, and spread the word with the rest of the school — and they collected 88 new books amongst the usual end-of-school year craziness! These books will be going directly to kids at CHOC Children’s Hospital next week! Thank you to all PCE families who donated, and ECBC is looking forward to a continuing partnership with Peters Canyon!
Thank you Grace Lutheran School, Huntington Beach, for hosting a third consecutive book drive for ECBC and collecting 142 terrific books! A special shout out to the awesome middle school students who conducted the book drive — including making posters and collection boxes as well as manning a book donation table for a week before and after school. Also, thank you to Joi Vutpakdi for rallying the kids behind our cause and for her work to help the kids make their book drive a success. THANK YOU GRACE LUTHERAN!
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!
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!
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!
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!
THANK YOU Hicks Canyon Elementary families for the 83 books that you purchased for ECBC at your book fair this past week! 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 Tina Jussal for your making this happen despite such short notice!
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!
