So You Want To Be A Roller Coaster Designer is a fun, fast, and informative children’s book that takes readers behind the scenes of one of the most exciting engineering jobs imaginable. Do you have a personal connection to theme parks or engineering?

Yes, deeply, on both counts. I’m a roller coaster fanatic. My family plans vacations around theme parks. We compare notes on the launch sequence of every new ride. We have strong opinions about which coaster’s first drop is the best in the country, and we will defend those opinions vigorously. Theme parks are my happy place. A great coaster gives you real fear and real safety in the same instant — and someone designed that. They calculated the exact second your stomach drops, the precise moment your hands fly up, the last possible point at which the brake run can engage. I don’t see the engineering side and the fun side as two different things. They’re inextricably intertwined.  

Q2: How did you approach explaining complex ideas like force, velocity, and g-forces in a way kids can understand?

The trick is to start with what kids already know in their bodies. Every kid who has ridden a coaster has felt g-forces, even if they have not heard the word. They know what it feels like when your stomach lifts at the top of the first hill. They know the press at the bottom of the loop. They know the floating moment in an airtime hill. The science is not abstract, because they have already experienced it. So the book starts with the feelings and then names them. Once “that press at the bottom” is connected to “two g’s of force,” the physics stops being a textbook concept and becomes something happening in their own body — something they have always known but never had a word for. Giving a kid the word for something they already feel is one of the most powerful ways to make science more accessible.

Q3: The illustrations capture the excitement of riding. Do you think visuals help kids connect more deeply to STEM topics?

Absolutely, and I think we sometimes underestimate how much. STEM topics get described as conceptual, but most of them are deeply visual at their core. Engineering is shapes meeting forces. Physics is bodies moving through space. Roller coaster design is literally the choreography of a steel structure interacting with gravity. When a kid can see the angle of a launch hill alongside the explanation of why that angle matters, the concept lands in a different way than text alone could deliver. And visuals open the door for a kind of learner who often gets left out — the kid who thinks in pictures, who builds before they read, who has been told their whole school career to slow down and use words. A good illustration tells that kid: this field was built for minds like yours. 

Q4: What advice would you give to a child who wants to design roller coasters someday, and what skills or interests should they start developing now?

Ride coasters with your designer brain on. Most kids ride a coaster and feel the thrill. A future engineer rides the same coaster and starts noticing things: why does that turn bank exactly that way? Why does the sequence start with the big drop instead of saving it for last? Where is the brake run hidden, and how did the designer make you forget it was coming? Perhaps surprisingly, paying attention to the engineering does not ruin the ride. It makes it better. Once you can see the choices the designer made, every drop becomes a tiny conversation between you and the clever person who built this thing to thrill you. You ride harder. You laugh louder. You start clocking which parks have the most brilliant engineers, and you defend your favorites. Every ride becomes a free engineering lesson and a more thrilling ride at the same time. The formal training can come later: physics, mechanical engineering, sometimes architectural design. But the curiosity that fuels all of it is something you can start practicing the next time you are in line. Theme park engineering is one of the few careers where being a fan is genuinely useful preparation. Lean all the way in.

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