8-Year-Old Girl Uses YouTube to Read to Children Too Sick For Visitors

While training to become a Junior Ambassador at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles earlier this year, Shira Josephson came across a set of doors she wasn’t allowed to go through because the children on the other side were too sick for visitors. This stuck with Shira, and as she sat quietly in the car alongside her mother later that day, she remembered seeing the hospital’s reading area in the corner of the lobby. This gave Shira an idea: since the children couldn’t have visitors and were blocked off from the story area, she could read the kids stories by filming herself.

According to her mother, Shira has admired books ever since she was introduced to reading at an early age.

“We would read to her every night before she went to bed. That’s all she’s ever known,” Josephson says. “Once she was able to read, she just took to it. She’s in a couple of book clubs where they once a month send her books. She’ll go through those, and then ask for more books to read right after!”

Along with being a philanthropist an overall cool kid, she is also an author, having published her first book, The Girl on the Subway, in July of this year. Proceeds from the 24-page hand-drawn book — which was inspired by a girl Shira met in New York City on a family trip — benefit the hospital.

Josephson says she is immensely proud of her daughter, and she is also moved by the many patients and families that are continuing to persevere against the odds.

“The courage I’ve seen from the children and the parents when we’ve been involved at the hospital this past year is humbling,” she says.