Where we serve
Partnering hospitals
Ruby’s Reading Circle is offered to newly bereaved parents at participating hospitals. We are growing the circle, with more to come.
Northwestern Medicine Prentice Women’s Hospital
Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital
Are you interested in hosting Ruby’s Reading Circle at your hospital?
Contact RRCDonate a book
Give a memory in your baby’s name
Books are donated in memory of babies gone too soon, a quiet thread connecting families who’ve walked this path before with those just beginning it. Each one carries a dedication sticker honoring the baby who inspired the gift, along with a nameplate for the baby it’s given to. Donations ship directly to us, and we deliver them to the hospitals.
Families, friends, and loss parents have used Ruby’s Reading Circle to honor babies on their birthdays and on special holidays, as a way of keeping their memories alive.
Important — please read before ordering
Add your dedication in the Amazon gift receipt
When you check out, select “This is a gift” and include your dedication details in the gift message. Without it, we can’t dedicate the book properly.
- ✦ Baby’s name being honored
- ✦ Donor name, as you’d like it to appear (optional)
- ✦ A short message, if you’d like one included
The book menu
Curated with intention
Books for Baby
Parents are invited to choose one of these books to read to their baby and keep as a cherished memento of their time together.
The Invisible String / El Hilo Invisible
by Patrice Karst, Joanne Lew-Vriethoff
Wherever You Are: My Love Will Find You
by Nancy Tillman
Un Beso en Mi Mano
by Audrey Penn
That's Me Loving You
by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
Books for Siblings
Families with living children are welcome to select an additional book designed to support siblings as they navigate this together.
Dear Star Baby
by Malcolm Newsome
There Was a Baby...
by Laura J. Cameron
The Garden of Memories
by Playful & Active Mind Books
Everywhere, Still
by M.H. Clark
How it works
A moment that lasts forever
When a family experiences a pregnancy loss, the world they had pictured, first cries, tiny hands, a future filled with firsts, quietly falls away. In the hush of the hospital room, amid a grief too vast for words, parents often don’t know what to do. How to be with their baby. How to make the brief time they have mean something.
This is where Ruby’s Reading Circle meets them. A nurse gently offers the program as a memory making opportunity. Parents are then able to choose one book from the menu to read aloud to their baby. In that moment, they get to experience something that all parents do: the simple act of reading to their child.
The book goes home with them. Long after the hospital room fades, it remains as a keepsake of a love that mattered, proof that their baby was here, and was loved. For families with other children, a sibling book helps brothers and sisters hold that love too.
Every book you donate becomes that moment for another family.
Dedicated in a baby’s name, it becomes a gift they will hold forever.
Donate a book“While this moment is far from what families pictured, it is more precious than they may realize. When our daughter was stillborn in September 2024, one of our deepest regrets was not spending enough time with her before saying goodbye — we simply did not know how. This program is meant to encourage families to make a memory with their baby through a simple act that feels gentle and natural in a moment that is anything but.”
Jenna Mills — Ruby’s mom and project lead