{"id":471351,"date":"2025-12-25T19:49:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T19:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/471351\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T19:49:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T19:49:12","slug":"nonprofit-gives-books-to-philadelphia-pediatric-cancer-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/471351\/","title":{"rendered":"Nonprofit gives books to Philadelphia pediatric cancer patients"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Books were a form of self-care for Emily Bhatnagar when she was a child, offering her comfort and escape. What began as a way to share that lifeline with other kids has grown into For Love and Buttercup, a nonprofit that has donated tens of thousands of books to children with cancer across the country.\n<\/p>\n

Since 2019, the University of Pennsylvania student has been caring for her father, who was diagnosed with Stage 4 thyroid cancer while she was still in high school in Maryland.\n<\/p>\n

While Bhatnagar initially tried to balance her father\u2019s care with her school obligations, she found it to be too overwhelming.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cI had taken a year and a half off from high school to just take care of my dad,\u201d she said. \u201cI tried to do both during COVID. In between online classes, and then during my five-minute breaks, I would be rushing to tube feed him or give him his medications.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

She reasoned that school will always be there, so she prioritized caring for her dad.\n<\/p>\n

As a way to cope in the meantime, Bhatnagar reflected on her goals and turned to her passions \u2013 one of which was to comfort and cheer up children with cancer. She explained she has always liked spending time with kids, and wanted to help children who are in a similar position to her father.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to put myself into the shoes of maybe a 4-year-old or a 7-year-old child who\u2019s in a hospital room during Christmas, and they look at the windows and there\u2019s snow outside, and they want to play and make a snowman or a snow angel so bad, but they\u2019re in a hospital room,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t think that should define them. I think that there is so much to look forward to as soon as they get better, and I know they will.\u201d
\n\"EmilyEmily Bhatnagar has received various awards and accolades since creating her nonprofit in 2021. (Courtesy of Emily Bhatnagar\/Instagram)\n<\/p>\n

\u2018A small neighborhood project\u2019<\/p>\n

Wondering what she could do to help pediatric cancer patients, Bhatnagar remembered her love of books. As a young kid, she sometimes struggled to make friends, she said. Books became an escape.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing up, I was very shy,\u201d she said. \u201cI had the worst social anxiety.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

So she decided to organize a book drive for young patients. It started as a small ask: book donations from neighbors on the NextDoor app.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI was expecting to have a really hard time looking for new books, but my inbox was flooded with messages of kind neighbors saying, \u2018Yeah, we have books, come on over,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cSo, my brother and I spent that whole summer basically driving house to house, picking up books.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

That small side gig developed into For Love and Buttercup, Bhatnagar said.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt first started as a small neighborhood project to help me cope,\u201d she said. \u201cBut in a way, it\u2019s done countless things to me that I don\u2019t think any medicine or therapy could have done. And it later became, \u2018Oh, wait, I think this is my dream career that I accidentally got into.\u2019\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Her story went viral from there. She received national recognition from outlets like Good Morning America<\/a>, The TODAY show<\/a>\u00a0and The Washington Post<\/a>. This helped her scale her mission even further.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI was able to start an Amazon wish list for completely brand new books, which are perfect, especially because the kids are immunocompromised, and sometimes having something completely brand new is even better,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n

Bhatnagar\u2019s reach has expanded across the U.S., donating over 25,000 books since she started her nonprofit at age 17.\n<\/p>\n

And her impact extends to her \u201chome away from home,\u201d Philadelphia.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cPhilly was the first place my mom immigrated to, and where she first moved to in the United States, so I just knew I wanted to do a holiday book drive in Philly this year,\u201d she said. \u201cI think Philadelphia will always feel like a home away from home for me, like it\u2019s just sort of where my American roots are, in a way.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

She is donating books across the Philadelphia area to children who are spending this holiday season in hospitals, including St. Christopher\u2019s Hospital for Children and Penn State, and to various pediatric support groups in the area. She said her book drive this year is based on a book series called The Tales of Charlie Wags.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted the kids who are maybe staying in the hospital rooms and can\u2019t explore and go out in the snow to have a book that can help them travel beyond their imagination,\u201d she said. \u201cSo in the book, Charlie Wag is a sweet puppy, and with the wag of his tail, he\u2019s able to travel to different countries in each series.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

She says she wants to use these books to inspire awe and imagination in children.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":471352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,24003,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-471351","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-pa","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-university-of-pennsylvania","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115781944434514789","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}