High Schooler From North Haven Launches Charity That Donates Books for Hospitalized Children

Sixteen-year-old Olivia Wilson, who will be a junior at Marymount High School in Manhattan this fall, suffered from asthma as a child that required more than one hospital stay. An avid reader, she depended on her grandparents and parents to bring her books during those confinements.

“It was difficult for me to cope with it. I would get anxious in the hospital,” she said. “And I always liked books. They were a tactile thing that helped me relax and helped me to sleep.”

Yet another hospital stay when Wilson was 13 planted a seed in her mind when she was confronted by the dearth of good reading material available to her in the hospital, and the boredom of having to watch television.

Why not collect donations to provide hospitals with books for everyone from the youngest toddler to 18-year-olds?

Thus was born “Covers for Recovery,” a charity Wilson, whose family splits its time between Manhattan and North Haven, launched in the summer of 2023.

That first year, Wilson raised $1,300 and collected about 500 books, some new, some gently used, for donation to various New York City hospitals.

“I got a lot of support from my school community,” Wilson said of her inaugural book drive. She is shifting gears and will only donate new books — to help avoid spreading disease through used ones — and is conferring with hospitals’ representatives to find out what kind of books they would like to provide for their patients. She is also branching out into a number of different languages, including Spanish, Mandarin, Russian and Creole.

This year, Wilson plans to donate books to Children of Bellevue at Bellevue Hospital; the Jo Carole & Ronald Lauder Newborn Intensive Care Unit at Mt. Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital; MSK Kids at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Stony Brook Hospital; Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip; and Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone Hospital in New York.

Wilson said she focused on books because “our lives are consumed by media. We are inundated with TV and technology all the time,” and she thinks books can have a calming effect on other kids, just as they did on her.

Wilson said her school community and her family have been key partners in her efforts, with classmates donating books and money to the cause, and her mother, Renee, who formerly worked in public relations, helping her with press releases and solicitations for funds and her father, David, and brother Freddie helping her make deliveries.

Wilson also got a boost from an entrepreneurial class she took last year at Marymount. Her teacher, Don Buckley, encouraged her to apply for a “Build a Bright Future” grant from Frigo Cheese Heads, a brand of Saputo Cheese USA Inc. Wilson said she was thrilled to learn that she had won a $5,000 top prize, which will help cover the cost of expanding her donations. She also was a runner-up for an Atherton Award for young women entrepreneurs.

“This has been something I’ve been working on the last three years,” Wilson said. “It’s my baby. It’s something I’ve watched grow as I have put things together and learned how to reach the right people.”

Wilson has been busy of late, attending high school volleyball preseason workouts and getting serious about the college application process. But she hopes “Covers for Recovery” won’t end when she heads off to school next year.

“It has been a way for me to use my creativity for good and come up with something that would be able to continue and that I can pass on,” she said.

Learn more about “Covers for Recovery” by visiting its website, coversforrecovery.com, or its Instagram page, @coversforrecovery. Donations can be made by Venmo at @Covers4Recovery.