So You Want To Be A Roller Coaster Designer (Theme Park Engineer)
by Linda Soules
MOST DISTINCTIVE PROSE BOOKY
The judge's reasoning
Linda Soules writes nonfiction career books for kids the way the best ones should be written: as if the subject itself is the most exciting thing in the world, and the reader is exactly the right person to hear about it. The prose in So You Want To Be A Roller Coaster Designer is genuinely distinctive — clean, rhythmically controlled, and lit up with small moments of wonder that never tip into condescension.
The book's central move — treating physics as emotional experience — is executed with real elegance. "The physics is the fun" lands as a thesis statement, and Soules earns it on every page. The loop geometry section (teardrops, not circles) explains a counterintuitive engineering fact in two sentences that would hold up in a science classroom. The "Day in the Life" chapter is structured like a film cut — 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM, each beat revealing a different facet of the job — and it works.
What elevates this above competent series nonfiction is the emotional intelligence of the closing note: "Nobody requires a roller coaster. And yet the line stretches around the block." That's a genuine observation about human nature, delivered to a ten-year-old without talking down. The section on John Wardley — "Coaster design has been arguing with his ideas ever since" — gives a Famous Designers page actual critical texture, not just biography.
The body-as-measuring-instrument framing ("Every sensation is information. The body is the last measuring device.") is the kind of line that sticks with a reader long after the book is closed. Soules found the emotional core of a STEM subject and built outward from it. That is craft.
Judged by Brooke Hayes — Reader-at-Large · Cross-Genre · Emerging Voices
"Every book is the only book for somebody."
Supporting passages
"Nobody requires a roller coaster. And yet the line stretches around the block. The designer who made that happen translated equations into delight, physics into memory, numbers into screams of pure happiness. That is not a small thing to do with an engineering degree. It might be one of the most human things there is."
This closing passage demonstrates Soules's ability to land a genuine philosophical observation in plain, rhythmically precise sentences aimed squarely at a middle-grade reader without a hint of condescension.
"For children especially, the first big ride is a memory — a moment when they discovered they were braver than they thought. The theme park engineer who designed the ride that provided that experience gave them something they will remember for their whole lives."
By connecting the engineer's work to a specific childhood emotional milestone, Soules gives the career stakes a personal weight that transforms this from career guide to genuine invitation.
"Every sensation is information. The body is the last measuring device."
Two short sentences that reframe the act of riding a coaster as a professional instrument — precise, memorable, and exactly calibrated to the book's central argument that physics and feeling are the same thing.
Per-axis rubric scores
Every Booky-winning book is scored across all ten craft axes. The award is given on the top axis (or top two for premium tiers).
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