Linda Soules Releases 'So You Want To Be A Professional Athlete,' a Kids' Guide to Elite Sports Training

Author Linda Soules has released So You Want To Be A Professional Athlete: A Kids' Guide to Sports, Training, Competition, and the Dedicated Athletes Who Push Their Bodies and Minds to Be the Best, a 38-page illustrated nonfiction book for readers ages 10 to 14. The title is available now at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1972766201. It explains what elite athletes do every day: periodized training, nutrition, recovery, mental conditioning, and the team of specialists behind them. The book has already won a Literary Titan Gold Book Award, the Grand Prize in the 2026 Purple Dragonfly Book Awards, and a Silver Award in Children's Nonfiction at the 2026 CIPA EVVY Book Awards.

The book is part of Soules's So You Want To Be A... career-exploration series. It arrives as more children enter organized youth sports, where the distance between playing a game and building a career is rarely explained. Most young fans see professional athletes only in highlight reels and trophy ceremonies. The book shows the years of unseen work that come before those moments, and it treats its readers as capable of handling the details.

Children who love a sport often meet the idea of going professional through broadcasts, social media clips, and stadium crowds. Those formats show the result and leave out the process. They rarely cover how an athlete structures a training year, why sleep is scheduled like practice, or what happens when an injury, a slump, or the end of a short career forces a change of direction.

Parents, coaches, teachers, and librarians face the same gap when a young athlete asks what it would really take. Many available resources fall into two camps: motivational material that celebrates success, or technical material written for adults. Soules's book targets the space between them. Its premise is stated in the opening line of its description: talent gets you noticed, but talent alone has never made anyone a professional athlete. The book is written for the child who is, in the publisher-neutral words of its description, "never just playing," and who wants honest, specific answers about whether this path might be a calling.

The book follows the athletic year from pre-season conditioning through in-season competition and recovery. Readers learn how athletes build their bodies through periodized training programs, in which effort and rest are planned in phases rather than left to chance. Sections on nutrition science, biomechanics, and carefully planned sleep and recovery explain why elite performance depends on managing the hours outside practice as much as the hours inside it. Vivid illustrations and real stories of what elite training looks like from the inside support the text.

A second thread covers the mental side of the work. The book describes how athletes develop mental toughness and psychological resilience to handle pressure, failure, and the scrutiny that comes with competing at the highest level. It argues that mindset and discipline matter as much as speed, strength, or natural ability, because at the professional level the margin between winning and losing is smaller than most people imagine. It also introduces the team behind each athlete: coaches, trainers, nutritionists, and sports psychologists who coordinate so that one person, in one moment, can do something extraordinary.

The book also addresses what a sports career costs and what it gives back. It covers the full arc of an athletic life, including its intensity and its brevity, and how the best athletes build confidence and prepare for what comes after the final game. Few books for this age group discuss career endings, but the subject bears directly on how young athletes and their families make long-term decisions about time, education, and identity.

The book's central difference is tone. Soules writes for 10-to-14-year-olds without talking down to them and without oversimplifying. It does not promise that talent plus effort guarantees a professional contract, and it does not discourage readers from trying. It lays out the demands and lets the reader weigh them. It is sport-agnostic, written for young competitors in baseball, soccer, basketball, swimming, or any sport that asks for everything they have. Its subject is the shared structure of elite preparation rather than the rules of one game.

"Talent gets a kid noticed, but it never made anyone a professional. I wanted young readers to see the work that happens before the arena lights come on," said Linda Soules, author of the So You Want To Be A... series.

The book is aimed at several groups. Young athletes who train year-round can compare their own routines with what professionals do, from recovery habits to mental preparation. Reluctant readers who follow sports closely may find an entry point into nonfiction. Parents and coaches can use the book as a conversation starter about commitment, balance, and long-term goals. Teachers and librarians building career-exploration shelves get a title that connects sports to science topics such as biomechanics, nutrition, and sleep. A classroom could use the chapters on the support team to show that careers in sports include sports psychology, nutrition, and athletic training, not only play on the field.

The book's recognition comes from three separate programs. It won the Literary Titan Gold Book Award, was named Grand Prize winner in the 2026 Purple Dragonfly Book Awards, and took the Silver Award in the Children's Nonfiction category of the 2026 CIPA EVVY Book Awards. The series it belongs to is also described as award-winning. For buyers choosing among the many titles aimed at young sports fans, independent recognition in the nonfiction category offers one signal of editorial quality, though the book's contents are the better test.

The book is available now through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1972766201. Its ISBN is 978-1-972766-20-0. It runs 38 pages and is categorized as children's nonfiction, recommended for ages 10 to 14. Current formats, pricing, and shipping options appear on the product page and may change, so readers should check the listing at purchase. Because the book is part of a larger series, buyers who want related career titles can find the author's other volumes through the same listing page.

The book fits a series with an ambitious scope. Soules envisions the So You Want To Be A... collection spanning more than 180 titles in total, and more than 60 have been published to date, with new releases arriving on a steady cadence. Existing topics range from astronauts and marine biologists to magicians, stunt performers, and roller coaster designers. Each volume follows the same approach: pull back the curtain on a real career, including its joys, its challenges, and the path to get there. The professional athlete title extends that approach to a field many children already follow closely but understand mainly from the stands.

About Linda Soules and the So You Want To Be A... series: Soules is the author and creator of the series, a growing collection of career-exploration books for readers ages 10 to 14 and beyond. Her philosophy is that young readers are smarter, more curious, and more capable than publishing often assumes, and that they deserve books that respect their intelligence while sparking enthusiasm. Before turning to children's publishing, she spent 25 years in law and finance, advising hedge funds and sophisticated financial institutions on legal and regulatory matters, a career she credits with teaching precision, discipline, and how to translate intricate subjects into plain language. So You Want To Be A Professional Athlete is available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1972766201.