An 11-year-old Bay Village girl named Tessa is battling cancer, and in early September her bedroom will be transformed into what organizers are calling a Cat Book Castle — a space inspired by her love of books, cats, the cartoon feline Garfield, and Harry Potter. The makeover will also include a custom Little Free Library built for her front yard, giving her a way to share her favorite stories with neighbors.
The project is a partnership between Special Spaces, a national nonprofit that designs and renovates bedrooms reflecting each child's interests and personality, and FrogTape, the Avon, Ohio-based painter's tape brand that serves as the nonprofit's official national painter's tape partner. As Cleveland.com reports, the two organizations say their goal is to provide hope and joy to children and families facing cancer, and Tessa's room transformation is scheduled to take place in early September 2026 in Bay Village.
FrogTape team members are set to volunteer their time, hands and painting skills to transform Tessa's room on September 8, according to the same report. The FrogTape team is also building and painting the custom Little Free Library slated for her front yard, a nod to the broader Little Free Library movement that began in Hudson, Wisconsin in 2009, became a nonprofit in 2012, and has since grown to more than 150,000 registered book-sharing boxes in over 115 countries worldwide, according to Wikipedia.
A National Nonprofit With Local Roots
Special Spaces was founded in 2004 on the belief that children facing difficult journeys need a special space to heal, recover and have fun, per the report. The organization has since grown to 10 chapters in 10 states and has transformed more than 1,700 bedrooms for children across the country, operating through a network of volunteers and donors. Great Nonprofits notes that the organization was founded by Jennifer Swain in Knoxville, Tennessee, to design custom bedroom makeovers for children ages 2 to 19 battling cancer who are within one year of active treatment, according to Great Nonprofits.
Locally, FrogTape and Special Spaces Cleveland have completed four bedrooms throughout Greater Cleveland since 2022, backed by 82 local volunteers who have contributed 1,550 hours of their time. Before FrogTape's manufacturer, Shurtape Technologies, launched its national sponsorship of Special Spaces in May 2024, the company had already partnered with the nonprofit in 2023 to sponsor a sports-themed bedroom makeover for a child facing cancer in nearby Rocky River, Ohio, according to Shurtape Technologies.
The Scale Of A Single-Day Transformation
A standard Special Spaces room makeover costs between $6,000 and $8,000 — typically sponsored for $7,500 — and is executed in a single day by a team of designers and volunteers while the child is out of the home, a logistical approach that minimizes disruption for immunocompromised children. Nationwide, the FrogTape and Special Spaces partnership has been powered by more than 105,000 volunteer hours, has involved approximately 5,670 volunteers, and has supported 566 total makeovers since it began, per the Cleveland.com report.
Bay Village itself is a lakefront suburb in western Cuyahoga County with a population of 15,984 and a median household income of $132,254, according to 2024 U.S. Census Bureau estimates cited by Census Reporter. The affluent community west of Cleveland now finds itself the backdrop for a project built around one of the hardest things a family can face.
Why These Rooms Matter
Childhood cancer remains the leading disease-related cause of death among children in the United States, even as survival outcomes have improved dramatically. The American Cancer Society estimates that 9,680 children under age 15 will receive a new cancer diagnosis nationwide in 2026, and the 5-year relative survival rate for pediatric cancer patients has climbed from 58% in the mid-1970s to 85% today.
In Ohio specifically, cancer claimed the lives of an average of 64 children and adolescents each year between 2019 and 2023, according to the Ohio Department of Health. A 2026 study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, examined via PubMed, found that U.S. childhood and adolescent cancer incidence averaged 18.2 cases per 100,000 people between 2001 and 2022, rising annually through 2016 before declining by 0.96% per year through 2022, with researchers attributing part of the recent decline to changes in screening and diagnostic classifications.
Against that backdrop, a single bedroom made over in a day carries outsized meaning for families navigating long treatment timelines. For Tessa, that meaning will take the shape of a Cat Book Castle — and a Little Free Library out front where she can pass her favorite stories along to the rest of Bay Village.
