Literally Healing

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323-361-7153

Specialized Children’s Books for Patient Families

The Literally Healing™ program uses books to lift the spirits of our patients and their families.

A core component of the program is a dedicated therapeutic library with over 1,000 specially selected books that are designed to help children build mastery, courage and hope while they are in our hospital.

Health care providers request specific recommendations from our team for patients during particularly stressful times in their recovery.

Providers then read these carefully selected books to patients or encourage families to experience them together. Doing so often paves the way for patients to disclose their worries and fears to their caregivers or their parents, fears that they might not otherwise have felt comfortable sharing.

The most common issues that our program can address through books include:

living with serious illness, physical limits and disability.
coping with negative feelings like worry, fear or sadness.
dealing with siblings who are jealous of the attention the child is receiving.
feelings of guilt for their condition.
coping with changes in family structure.
dealing with the fear of death or feelings of grief (for siblings).

Patient is Empowered to Begin Chemotherapy

An eight-year-old patient was reluctant to cut her hair as she readied to begin her chemotherapy treatment. With the encouragement of our program staff, her social worker read her Kathy's Hats by Trudy Krishner – a story about a girl who discovers that her hair will grow back after she finishes treatment. After hearing the story the patient announced, “Oh, I see. My hair will grow back. Now I'm ready to have it cut off."

Gifting Library

The program also uses books as gifts for patients to provide them with a source of distraction during their recovery. Gifts of books often lift the spirits of our patients and, for those who enjoy reading regularly, a new book can provide an opportunity to engage in an activity that they associate with life outside the hospital.

Generous volunteers make themselves available to assist patients, families and staff in selecting free books from the Gifting Library, deliver gift books to children in their rooms when they cannot visit the Library and read to patients at the bedside when they are unable to leave their rooms.

A BookMOObile, a mobile cart with a cow face and tail, gingham ribbon and cowbell, is used to wheel these free books around the hospital for children of all ages, from board books for infants to novels for young adults.

A Therapeutic Book for Children with Spina Bifida

Experience the Book
(English)	(Espanol)

In 2005, Stacey Mizokawa, MD, of our Spina Bifida program, recognized that children with spina bifida had few resources to address questions about their condition. With generous support from First 5 LA, Dr. Mizokawa partnered with Claire Austin, Literally Healing program founder and coordinator, to create a one-of-a-kind online experience, Right Under My Nose, to address this need.

Right Under My Nose, is designed to help children with spina bifida understand their condition, discover new ways to enrich their lives and support their parents and caregivers in providing answers to their questions. The book is hosted as an interactive experience in both English and Spanish so more children and families can take advantage of this empowering story free-of-charge.

Literacy Promotion

The program supports our patients’ academic success by giving them books that support literacy. Each weekday that a child is an inpatient at our hospital, he or she may select and keep one book.

With the help of generous donors, last year, the program donated over 30,000 new children’s books to our patients and their siblings. We have developed a wish list of books that are highly prized by our patients. If you wish to donate books for our patients, please contact us for a wish list before your next visit to a commercial bookstore.