Our Story
Where it started
I’m Clarkie Doster, creator of Book Party. If you’re like me, you love an origin story. Here’s a bit of mine.
I spent years teaching middle school English in Chicago. My favorite part of my job wasn’t even technically in my contract: it was helping kids fall in love with reading. I loved helping them see that the books in their hands were worth talking about, worth arguing over, worth connecting to their own lives.
And when my first son was born, it came naturally at home, too — so naturally that I sent a picture of my four-month-old “reading” to a coworker with a comment about his serious reading stamina. It wasn’t really a joke.
I remember watching my toddler make connections between books and life while he was still learning to speak. And I remember feeling deeply sad that there were teenagers I knew — bright, curious children — who couldn’t make those same connections without considerable effort.
My son wasn’t special. And I wasn’t either. We just had information that isn’t handed to you in a manual when you’re wheeled out of the delivery room.
What I did about it.
This is not an overnight success story.
When I first walked out of the classroom, I did so much thinking that my ideas became a tangled mess of hopes and dreams I couldn’t make sense of, much less articulate. I took online courses about building businesses and joined several groups that both got me nowhere and yet somehow led me right to where I needed to be. (Here’s the takeaway: listen to yourself.) I started a Substack newsletter about family reading — Book Party — and struggled through a second hyperemesis pregnancy. When my second son was born, I had even more ideas and even less bandwidth to figure out what the ideas actually meant. I kept writing Book Party — the newsletter — and taking risks with it. I did a lot of talking (uncomfortably but full of hope) until people started to understand what it was I was trying to say.
Through it all, I started to figure out what everything I’d been yapping and dreaming and not actually doing anything about was really going to be. It had to be off the internet. I needed to make a physical product.
I wanted to create something that could be used over and over again. I didn’t want to write another book that someone like me would read and highlight and forget about. I didn’t want to make families feel guilty, because there’s nothing to feel guilty about. I wanted to give them a springboard that empowered them to create their own unique reading culture.
And here’s my hope for what these card decks do for your family: you no longer need to put a Remember card on your mirror, pull a Do card when you’re planning your weekend, or have the Say and Wonder deck at the dinner table. They’re on your shelf — beautiful and sentimental now — as reminders of where you’ve been and what you’ve built together.
I’m so happy you’re here. The books — and even these decks — are really just the beginning.