Linda Soules Releases 'So You Want To Be A Toy Designer,' a Career Guide for Readers Ages 10-14

Author Linda Soules has released So You Want To Be A Toy Designer, a 38-page illustrated children's nonfiction book that explains how toys are conceived, engineered, tested and made. Written for readers ages 10 to 14 and up, the book is available now at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1972766252 under ISBN 978-1-972766-25-5. Its full subtitle is A Kids' Guide to Toy Invention, Product Design, Prototyping, and the Creative Minds Who Dream Up the Toys We Can't Stop Playing With. The title has won the Literary Titan Gold Book Award and the 2026 PenCraft Seasonal Book Award for Best Book for Children (Grades 4-6). It is the latest entry in Soules' So You Want To Be A… career-exploration series.

Career books for young readers often present jobs as a list of fun daily tasks. Toy design is a frequent subject of that treatment, because children are the end users and the product is play. The reality is more demanding. Toy designers typically combine industrial design training, a working knowledge of child development, materials engineering and repeated rounds of prototyping before a product reaches a shelf. Soules' book starts from that gap. It argues that the best toy ever made feels as if it always existed, yet someone had to invent it, and it asks young readers to consider the training and discipline behind that outcome.

The audience is children who already show the instincts the profession rewards: those who draw, build, tinker or take things apart to see how they work. The book is aimed at the upper elementary and middle school range, a period when students begin to ask what kinds of work exist and which school subjects connect to them. Rather than steering readers toward a single path, it describes the range of roles on a toy development team, including engineers, creative designers and manufacturing specialists, and shows how each contributes to turning an idea into a finished product.

The core of the book follows the design process in sequence, from first sketch to working prototype to safety testing. Readers learn how designers use child psychology to understand how play supports learning at different ages, and why a toy suited to a six-year-old will fail a ten-year-old. The text also covers how teams collaborate across disciplines. An engineer may be solving a mechanism problem while a designer works on form and a manufacturing specialist checks whether the object can be produced consistently. Detailed artwork illustrates these stages throughout.

A second strand of the book focuses on skills a young reader can begin building now. Soules describes the abilities toy designers develop, including sketching, 3D modeling, materials science and an understanding of how small hands interact with objects. The book connects each skill to activities that readers can try without professional tools. It also introduces visionary inventors whose toys became defining objects of childhood for generations, using their work to show how observation, iteration and persistence shape products that last. The intent is to make a technical career feel reachable without understating the work involved.

The book's distinguishing feature is its tone. According to the publisher-neutral book description, it "treats its readers as equals," with no talking down and no sugarcoating. It does not present toy design as a simplified or watered-down job. It describes years of industrial design training, the study of child development and the iterative testing that precedes manufacturing. That approach follows the philosophy behind the whole series: young readers are more curious and capable than the publishing world often assumes, and they respond to books that answer serious questions about their futures with substance and honesty.

"Kids ask serious questions about their futures, and they deserve a serious answer about how a toy goes from a first sketch to a child's hands," said Linda Soules, author of the So You Want To Be A… series.

The book has several practical uses. A child who loves building can see how that interest maps to industrial design, engineering and materials science. A reader who is drawn to understanding children can learn how child psychology informs product decisions. Parents and grandparents looking for a gift for a curious 10-to-14-year-old will find a book that supports conversation about careers rather than a quick read. Teachers and librarians building career-exploration shelves for grades 4 through 8 can use it alongside other titles in the series to show how varied creative and technical work can be.

So You Want To Be A Toy Designer is available through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1972766252. The book is 38 pages, illustrated throughout, and carries ISBN 978-1-972766-25-5. Readers and buyers can find current format and pricing details on the listing page. The book is categorized as children's nonfiction and is written for ages 10-14 and up. Because it is part of an established series, readers who finish this title can look for other careers covered in the So You Want To Be A… collection, which spans fields from space exploration and marine biology to magic, stunt performance and roller coaster design.

The toy design title also carries recognition connected to the series. The book description lists the So You Want To Be A… series as an award-winning collection, citing a Grand Prize at the 2026 Purple Dragonfly Book Awards and a Silver Award in Children's Nonfiction at the 2026 CIPA EVVY Book Awards. Alongside the Literary Titan Gold Book Award and the PenCraft Seasonal Book Award won by this title, those honors place the series among recognized independent children's nonfiction. Soules says the broader aim is steady growth, with new releases arriving on a regular cadence and covering a wider range of professions for young readers.

The series is envisioned to reach more than 180 titles in total, with more than 60 published to date. That plan positions the collection as a long-term career library for readers ages 10 to 14 and beyond, covering both well-known jobs and less obvious ones. Each book is designed to pull back the curtain on a real career, including its rewards, its challenges and the path to get there. The toy design volume fits this strategy by addressing a profession that children encounter daily through the objects they use, yet rarely see explained as a discipline with its own training and craft.

About Linda Soules and the So You Want To Be A… series. Linda Soules is the author and creator of the So You Want To Be A… series, a growing collection of career-exploration books for readers ages 10-14 and beyond. The series covers professions from astronauts and marine biologists to magicians, stunt performers and roller coaster designers. Before turning to children's publishing, Soules spent 25 years in law and finance, advising hedge funds and sophisticated financial institutions on legal and regulatory matters, a career that taught her precision, discipline and how to translate intricate subjects into accessible language. Her guiding principle is to never talk down to young readers. So You Want To Be A Toy Designer is available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1972766252.