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So You Want To Be A Teacher
So You Want To Be A Teacher, by Linda Soules, is an engaging and informative career guide for children ages eight to fourteen. The book begins with a powerful reminder that every doctor, astronaut, chef, engineer, and leader was once taught by someone. From there, Soules presents teaching as the profession behind every other profession. The author gives young readers an honest look at the patience, preparation, flexibility, and care required to help students learn and grow.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is its realistic portrayal of a teacher’s daily life. Readers follow a teacher from the quiet classroom early in the morning through lessons, classroom challenges, and evening grading at home. The book celebrates the rewarding moment when a struggling student finally understands something, but it also discusses tiring days, disrupted lessons, and the work teachers complete outside school hours. This balanced approach helps children understand that teaching can be difficult while still being deeply meaningful.
The book is also filled with practical and age-appropriate information. Young readers learn about lesson plans, manipulatives, classroom management, teacher training, and the importance of asking thoughtful questions. They are introduced to many different teaching careers, including kindergarten, high-school science, special education, and robotics coaching. Profiles of influential educators such as Anne Sullivan, Jaime Escalante, Maria Montessori, and Confucius add historical interest, while the glossary, fun facts, and career-readiness questions make the book especially useful for home or classroom learning.
Soules writes in a conversational tone that respects young readers and never talks down to them. The colorful illustrations make the information approachable, although a few visual details may appear inconsistent or oddly shaped. Even so, the strong writing and thorough research make this an excellent introduction to education as a career. So You Want To Be A Teacher is highly recommended for children who enjoy helping others understand new ideas, as well as for parents and educators who want to encourage thoughtful career exploration. It is both a practical guide and a sincere tribute to the teachers who shape lives one lesson, question, and encouraging word at a time.
Pages: 42 | ASIN : B0H9CNJM5W
So You Want To Be A Psychotherapist
So You Want To Be A Psychotherapist, by Linda Soules, is another excellent addition to the So You Want To Be A… series. Rather than focusing on vehicles, technology, or specialized equipment, this career guide introduces children to a profession in which the most powerful tool is the ability to listen. Soules explains how psychotherapists help people understand their emotions and heal through careful, honest conversation. Written for readers ages ten to fourteen, the book treats children as thoughtful equals while presenting mental health and therapy in a warm, approachable, and respectful way.
The book offers a thorough look at what psychotherapists actually do, where they work, and what a typical day might involve. Young readers learn about the familiar two chairs, the tissue box, the fifty-minute hour, and the surprising “doorknob moment,” when a client reveals something important just as a session is ending. Soules also explores settings beyond the traditional office, including schools, hospitals, video appointments, and barns where therapists work alongside horses. Fun facts, practical listening exercises, a self-assessment quiz, and a kid-friendly glossary make the material informative and engaging.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is its honesty. Soules doesn’t sugarcoat the educational requirements, licensing process, ethical responsibilities, emotional strain, or risk of burnout that can accompany this career. At the same time, these challenges are presented without discouraging readers. The book emphasizes the importance of empathy, curiosity, emotional steadiness, self-awareness, and self-care. It also introduces influential figures such as Carl Rogers, Mamie Phipps Clark, Virginia Satir, Marsha Linehan, Anna Freud, and Derald Wing Sue, showing how different people and ideas have helped shape the profession.
The warm, inviting illustrations and straightforward language make So You Want To Be A Psychotherapist accessible to younger readers while offering valuable insights for teenagers, parents, and adults. It’s especially well suited to the child whose friends naturally turn to them, the quiet listener who offers patience rather than judgment. The book may also reassure young people who feel nervous about attending therapy by showing that psychotherapists are caring professionals trained to listen and help. Realistic, encouraging, and deeply compassionate, this career guide invites readers to consider whether one of those two chairs in a quiet room might someday be theirs.
Pages: 40 | ASIN : B0H7GJDPJV
So You Want To Be A Journalist
So You Want To Be A Journalist, by Linda Soules, is an engaging and informative introduction to the demanding work behind every headline. Written for curious readers ages 10–14, the book moves beyond the glamour of television news to show journalism as a profession built on patience, courage, and persistence. Soules explains how reporters search for reliable information, ask difficult questions, verify facts, and communicate the truth clearly. By emphasizing that journalism can change laws, protect communities, and give a voice to people who might otherwise go unheard, the book presents the profession as both admirable and essential.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is its clear explanation of what journalists actually do. Readers learn about different careers, including beat reporters, investigative journalists, foreign correspondents, science reporters, and sportswriters. Soules also describes the daily rhythm of a newsroom, from the morning news scan and pitch meeting to interviews, fact-checking, revisions, and an unmovable deadline. Practical details about notebooks, recorders, public documents, source protection, and Freedom of Information requests give children a realistic understanding of the tools and responsibilities involved. The book is honest about the difficult parts of journalism while still conveying the excitement of uncovering an important story.
Soules’ writing is accessible, inspiring, and well suited to young readers with short attention spans. She explains unexpected skills journalists need, such as understanding statistics, scientific studies, percentages, and community issues. The historical profiles of Ida B. Wells, Nellie Bly, Edward R. Murrow, and Gordon Parks show how determined reporters have helped change the world. Fun sidebars about carrier pigeons, the mistaken “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline, and Watergate’s secret source add humor and variety. The detailed, colorful illustrations reinforce the text and help readers imagine everything from a busy newsroom to a reporter covering City Hall.
So You Want To Be A Journalist encourages children to ask whether something is true rather than simply accepting what they hear. It promotes accuracy, fairness, curiosity, and unbiased reporting while showing the importance of both local journalism and major international news organizations. Young readers are also given practical ways to begin preparing now, including reading the news, practicing clear writing, following community events, and asking thoughtful questions. This is an excellent resource for school libraries, home bookshelves, and middle school writing classes. It offers a complete and honest look at journalism while inspiring future writers and researchers to approach the world with courage, grit, and a commitment to the truth.
Pages: 39 | ASIN : B0H72BCNWV
HIDDEN PROFIT How to Find and Capture $500K–$2M+ in Hidden EBITDA Without Gutting Your Business
In Hidden Profit, David H. Tolly argues that many mid-market businesses already contain substantial recoverable value, not in some glamorous new market or sweeping transformation, but in the quieter places leaders often stop seeing: pricing leakage, procurement waste, working capital, customer mix, overhead discipline, and execution cadence. The book moves from EBITDA fundamentals into a practical diagnostic framework, then through seven “hidden profit” levers and a 90-day execution model, grounding its advice in turnaround cases such as Creative Solutions Group, Renaissance Cosmetics, and Savage Arms. What gives the book its force is its repeated insistence that profit is not found by gutting the business, but by making the economics visible enough that leaders can act with precision.
I found the book most compelling when it stripped away the romance of growth and asked harder, more adult questions about the quality of that growth. Tolly’s point that revenue can rise while margin quietly deteriorates feels simple at first, almost obvious, but the examples make it land with real weight. The $50 million manufacturing company that had rising EBITDA but declining margin becomes a small drama of managerial blindness, and the Renaissance Cosmetics case is even sharper: a company chasing shipments so aggressively that it created its own flood of returns. I admired the moral clarity of that lesson. Less revenue at a real margin is better than more revenue at a loss. It’s the kind of sentence that feels plain until you imagine saying it in a boardroom full of people addicted to top-line growth.
The writing is at its best when Tolly sounds like someone who has actually sat in the room when the lender called, and the spreadsheet stopped being theoretical. There’s a bracing directness to the voice, and the book’s recurring phrases, such as “build the bridge” and “assign the owners,” give the material a useful drumbeat. The prose can become procedural, especially in the checklists and worksheet sections. But I didn’t mind that much. The book doesn’t merely describe rigor; it practices it. Its ideas are not especially mystical, but they’re powerful because they honor the unglamorous truth that businesses usually fail in the seams between functions, not in the slogans on strategy decks.
I came away seeing Hidden Profit as a practical, unsentimental, and quietly humane book about restoring agency to leaders under pressure. It understands that numbers are never just numbers when payroll, debt, legacy, and reputation are attached to them. The strongest conclusion I drew is that hidden profit is less a treasure hunt than an act of disciplined attention. I’d recommend this book to CEOs, CFOs, board members, private equity operators, and business owners who suspect their company is working harder than its cash position suggests, especially those preparing for a sale or trying to strengthen EBITDA without damaging the living organism of the business.
Pages: 315 | ASIN : B0GX2QBG9X
So You Want To Be An Activist
So You Want To Be An Activist by Linda Soules is a thoughtful and empowering children’s book that introduces young readers to the real meaning of activism. Part of the larger So You Want To Be A… career-exploration series, this entry focuses on a subject many children may already sense in their everyday lives: unfairness. Rather than presenting activism as something distant or only for adults, the book shows kids that noticing a problem is often the first step toward meaningful change.
What makes this book especially effective is its honest look at what activists actually do. Young readers learn that activism is not just about marches, rallies, or loud public moments. It’s also about research, writing emails, gathering signatures, attending meetings, listening to communities, making phone calls, and organizing people around a shared goal. The book’s “day in the life” approach helps children picture the practical side of the work, from scanning the news early in the morning to attending community meetings in the evening. It also introduces tools such as petitions, megaphones, spreadsheets, and handmade signs, making the work feel both understandable and achievable.
Soules writes with warmth and respect for her audience, never talking down to young readers. I appreciated that the book does not pretend activism is always exciting or easy. It discusses burnout, patience, rejection, slow progress, and the quiet work that often goes unnoticed. At the same time, it remains inspiring through profiles of courageous changemakers such as Frederick Douglass, Wangari Maathai, Malala Yousafzai, and Mohandas Gandhi. These historical examples, along with fun facts, a glossary of civic terms, and practical first steps, help readers understand that activism requires courage, empathy, strategy, and persistence.
So You Want To Be An Activist is an excellent resource for children, parents, teachers, and librarians. The illustrations are engaging and diverse, helping young readers imagine themselves in the work, while the content is substantial enough to be useful even for older students exploring future careers or civic involvement. This book teaches children that their voices matter and that they do not have to wait until adulthood to care about their communities. It’s a grounded, encouraging, and highly recommended guide for any young reader who notices something unfair and wants to learn what they can do about it.
Pages: 38 | ASIN : B0H592VH75
A Serious Answer
So You Want To Be A Vaccine Developer introduces young readers to immunology, vaccine science, and medical research in an honest and accessible format. What age group did you imagine while writing the book?
The series is officially designated for ages 10 to 14, and that’s the reader I write toward — but I aim a little high on purpose, because kids are almost always more capable than the market assumes. I wanted Vaccine Developer to read like a conversation with a future colleague, not a pitch to a customer.
What was different about this particular title is that today’s kids already have a vocabulary their parents didn’t have at their age: mRNA, clinical trials, antibodies, Phase 3. They watched a vaccine arrive in real time during COVID. They have questions — real ones, sometimes hard ones — and they deserve a book that answers them honestly.
All that said, this is genuinely one of the most science-heavy books in the series because that is simply the nature of the work. You cannot tell the story of vaccine development without immune cells, antigens, and the elegant logic of how the body learns to recognize a threat it has never seen before. Striking the balance between accessible and overly technical was harder here than on almost any other title. I’ll admit there was a moment when I considered directing this one to a higher age range — and then I caught myself, because that would have meant neglecting the very 10-year-olds who are already asking these questions and deserve a serious answer. The reach is the point. Pushing the book up the age ladder would have been the easy choice; meeting children where their curiosity actually is took more work.
So I wrote for the curious 10-year-old, trusted the 8-year-old to reach up, and trusted the 14-year-old to find elements that deepened their understanding. So far, some of the 8-year-olds have been the most ferocious readers of all!
The book emphasizes teamwork, patience, and responsibility. Do you think those parts of science are often overlooked in children’s media?
Constantly. The dominant kid-science story is the eureka moment — apple falls, lightbulb appears, world changes by Tuesday. Real science looks almost nothing like that. A vaccine candidate identified in the lab today probably won’t reach the public for 10 or 15 years, if it gets there at all. Most experimental vaccines fail. The work is patient, collaborative, and frequently disappointing — and it is still one of the most beautiful careers a person can have.
I don’t think kids need to be protected from that picture. If we tell them science is a string of breakthroughs and then they meet the real thing, the letdown is much bigger than the truth would have been. Patience, teamwork, and the willingness to be wrong are not the boring parts of science. They’re the substance of it. A book that hides them is doing a child no favors.
What was the most rewarding part of creating this book?
Researching and writing the Katalin Karikó section, without question. Here is a biochemist whose university demoted her, whose grant applications were rejected again and again, who came close to walking away from science altogether — and whose stubborn decades of work on a molecule almost no one believed in became the foundation of the mRNA vaccines that protected the world during COVID. The Nobel Prize arrived in 2023, long after the work that earned it.
I wanted a generation of children who lived through the pandemic to know her name, because her story carries a truth I think every young person deserves to hear early: being dismissed by institutions does not determine the worth of your work. And the willingness to keep going on an important problem when no one is paying attention — when the funding dries up, when the title gets taken away, when the consensus says you are wasting your life, when peer pressure is at its strongest — is a quiet form of courage, and it is the kind that changes the world more often than the loud kind.
I cannot teach that in a paragraph of advice. But I could tell a true story about a person it actually happened to, and let the story do the work. That is what made writing this section the most rewarding part of the project. It’s a lesson I wish I had learned earlier in my own life, and one that many adults are still trying to learn. Handing it to a 10-year-old, in the form of a real woman whose name they will now remember, felt like something worth doing.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I tend to work on a dozen titles at any one moment and publish each one only when it feels ready — which means my “intended order” is always evolving. I was thrilled to release So You Want To Be A Diplomat and So You Want To Be A Coder (Computer Programmer) a few days ago, and I’m currently working on a cluster I’m excited about, including Judge, Lawyer, Teacher, Therapist, and Activist. After a long run inside the science and engineering careers, the shift to professions built on language, judgment, and human nature is using an entirely different muscle, and I’m having a wonderful time with it. Readers can expect those to roll out in the coming weeks.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | Amazon
Years of it. And somewhere on the other end of all that effort is a child who will never get sick from a disease that once killed millions.
So You Want To Be A Vaccine Developer takes young readers ages 10 to 14 inside one of the most demanding and genuinely world-changing careers in all of science. Not the headline version — the real one. The years of immunology, microbiology, and medical research that happen before a scientist ever designs a vaccine candidate. The painstaking discipline of teaching the human immune system to recognize a threat it has never encountered, by presenting it with something that mimics the danger but cannot cause the disease.
This book goes far beyond how vaccines work. It follows the entire journey — antigen design, laboratory science, preclinical studies, clinical trials across thousands of volunteers, manufacturing scale-up, cold-chain logistics, and the regulatory review that ensures every single dose reaching a clinic anywhere in the world is safe and identical. It introduces the team behind that work: immunologists, virologists, structural biologists, statisticians, manufacturing scientists, regulatory specialists, clinical researchers, and the people who navigate the intersection of medical ethics and public health.
Young readers will also explore the history of vaccination — from the legendary curiosity that led to the eradication of smallpox and the dramatic decline of polio, to the decades of stubborn mRNA research that made the COVID-19 vaccines possible in less than a year. They will discover what it actually takes to build this career: the scientific rigor, the patience through setbacks and failed candidates, and the moral seriousness required when your work determines whether an outbreak starts or never happens at all.
Illustrated and written with the honesty that kids this age deserve, this book does not talk down to its readers. It brings them all the way in. It explains how the immune system learns, remembers, and defends. It shows why vaccines are among the most powerful tools in the history of medical science. And it offers real guidance for young people curious about whether this STEM career might be their calling.
For the kid who hears about a disease being defeated and does not just feel relief — they immediately want to know how it was done, and who did it. Every vaccine ever made began with someone who turned curiosity into discipline, ran the experiments, and stayed with the work for the years it took.
Maybe that someone is you.
Education and Adventure
So You Want To Be A Treasure Hunter takes young readers inside the world of archaeology, focusing on the tools and dating methods in reader-friendly terms children can understand. Did you learn anything that surprised you in your research?
The biggest surprise was learning that the most responsible thing an archaeologist can do is sometimes nothing at all. I had assumed the discipline was about digging more, finding more, knowing more. It turns out the professional consensus today is to leave most sites untouched — because every excavation destroys the very context it studies, and the scientists who will read these sites 50 years from now will have tools no one alive today has imagined. That kind of restraint, that quiet deference to the future, struck me as profoundly humble in a way I hadn’t expected from a field I associated with adventure.
The other surprise was how many of the most famous discoveries were complete accidents. The Rosetta Stone was found by a French officer digging a fort foundation. The Terracotta Army was found by farmers digging a well. Mary Leakey’s hominid footprints arose from a paleontologist ducking a flying piece of elephant dung. The myth of the methodical archaeologist cracking ancient mysteries is partly true, but the messier truth is that the past has a habit of stepping out and waving.
Why do you think so many children are naturally fascinated by buried objects and ancient history?
Children haven’t yet been trained out of believing the world holds secrets. An adult walks past a patch of disturbed dirt; a child crouches down. An adult sees a rusted button in the gutter; a child wonders who lost it. That instinct — to suspect that the ordinary world is hiding something magical — is exactly the instinct archaeology rewards. It is one of the few fields where the question that comes most naturally to a seven-year-old (“what’s under there?”) is also the question that drives world-class research, and where the answer is uncertain until somebody picks up a brush and finds out.
I also think children are drawn to the past because they can sense, without anyone explaining it, that someone else has lived here before. The idea that another child once played in this field, dropped this clay marble, scratched their name into this brick — it doesn’t feel abstract to them. It feels like a friend they haven’t met yet. Archaeology gives them the tools to reach back and say hello. It tells them they are part of a very long line of people who have wondered what the world is and tried to leave it slightly more interesting than they found it.
There is one more piece, and it might be the most important. Children live in a world where almost everything has already been explained to them by an adult. Archaeology is one of the rare subjects where the adults openly admit they don’t know — where a Bronze Age civilization can vanish without explanation, where a script can sit undeciphered for centuries, where a sealed tomb might still hold a queen no one has ever heard of. To a child, the existence of genuine mystery — mystery that even grown-ups haven’t solved yet — is electrifying. It means there’s still room. It means the work isn’t finished. And it means that the curious child reading the book in their bedroom tonight might, one day, be the person who finally figures out what nobody else could.
The book balances education with adventure very well. How important was it that learning still felt exciting and imaginative?
Essential — but I don’t think of education and adventure as needing to be balanced like flour and sugar in a recipe. The adventure is already inside the truth. The writer’s job is to find it and get out of its way.
Archaeology is a vivid example. The trowel really does strike something a thousand years lost. The first human eyes on an object in fifteen centuries really are yours. A pollen grain trapped in a clay pot really can tell you what someone ate for dinner during the reign of an emperor. None of that needs dressing up. The excitement isn’t a decorative element a writer sprinkles on top of dry information to make it palatable — it is embedded in the actual work, woven into how the discoveries are made and what they reveal.
What I try to do is find the moments where the truth itself is already astonishing and let those moments carry the explanation. The point of the writing is to choose, out of everything that could be said about a profession, the details that already carry the charge — and then to render those details cleanly enough that the charge actually reaches the reader.
The other half is not to flatten what’s already vivid. I think children’s nonfiction often goes wrong by trying to make work sound easier, simpler, or safer than it really is. Kids see through that instantly. They can tell when a book trusts them and when it’s hedging. What I aim for, in every title in this series, is to meet a child eye to eye — to give them the real texture of a job, including the hard parts, and trust that the wonder will hold. It almost always does. The world is more interesting than the watered-down version of it, and children, more than anyone, already suspect this.
If you could take young readers to one archaeological site anywhere in the world, where would you choose and why?
Pompeii. Not because it’s the most beautiful site in the world, but because it’s the one where archaeology’s central insight lands with the most force: every life mattered.
When Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, it sealed an entire ordinary morning in volcanic ash. Bread still sat in the oven. Dogs were still leashed in their courtyards. A child had set down a wooden toy minutes before the world ended. None of these people made the history books. They weren’t emperors or generals. But 2,000 years later, archaeologists know what they had for breakfast, what they wrote on their walls, who they loved, who owed them money. Pompeii is the proof that ordinary lives are not lost — they are simply waiting for someone patient enough to read them.
I would want a child to stand on those streets and feel, in their own bones, that one day someone might walk where we walk and wonder about us with the same tenderness. That, more than anything, is what I hope archaeology teaches the next generation to carry forward.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | Amazon
So You Want To Be A Treasure Hunter takes young readers inside the real world of archaeology — not the movie version with booby traps and rolling boulders, but something far more fascinating. This is the story of how actual treasure hunters work: the years of study, the painstaking science, and the moment when a fragment of something ancient emerges from the earth and rewrites everything we thought we knew.
What does a real archaeologist do all day? How do they know where to dig? What happens when they uncover an artifact that has been buried for centuries — and how do they keep it from crumbling the moment it touches open air? This book answers those questions honestly, with vivid illustrations and writing that never talks down to its readers.
Inside, you will discover how ground-penetrating radar and remote sensing let scientists see beneath the surface before a single shovelful of soil is moved. You will learn how stratigraphic layers — the earth’s own timeline — help archaeologists read thousands of years of history recorded in the ground itself. You will explore the careful science of artifact conservation, the physical demands of fieldwork, and the intellectual detective work that turns a broken pottery shard into a window on a lost civilization.
This is also a book about careers — what it actually takes to become an archaeologist, from the geology and history you study in school to the fieldwork, laboratory analysis, and scholarly research that fill a working scientist’s life. It covers the history of archaeology itself, from the early days of treasure hunting to the rigorous science it has become, and the remarkable people who made that transformation happen.
But most of all, this is a guide for the kid who picks up every arrowhead, every old coin, every fragment of something mysterious — and feels not just curiosity but a deep hunger to know the story behind it. The kind of kid who looks at an ancient civilization and wants to understand the people who lived there, not just the objects they left behind.
The past is not gone. It is buried. And the next great archaeological discovery is still out there, waiting beneath the ground for someone who knows how to look.
So You Want to Be A Candy Scientist
So You Want to Be A Candy Scientist is a delightful and informative children’s book that turns candy into a gateway for scientific discovery. Written for curious young readers, the book explores the fascinating work of candy scientists, showing how chemistry, creativity, and problem-solving come together to make the treats kids know and love. From gooey caramels and crunchy lollipops to chocolate that melts just right, Soules explains how small changes in temperature, texture, and ingredients can completely transform the final product.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is how accessible and engaging it makes STEM concepts feel. Rather than reading like a textbook, the book feels conversational and inviting, helping readers understand topics such as sugar stages, chocolate tempering, sour candy chemistry, and the science behind color and flavor. Young readers learn that a lollipop is technically glass, cotton candy is mostly air, and chocolate gets its satisfying snap from carefully formed crystals. These fun facts make the science memorable while encouraging children to keep asking “why.”
Author Linda Soules also does an excellent job introducing the real people and teamwork behind candy making. Readers meet pioneers such as Harvey Wiley, Milton Hershey, and Rebecca Robbins, whose discoveries helped shape candy safety, shelf-stable chocolate, and food coloring research. The book highlights that being a candy scientist is not just about tasting sweets all day; it takes patience, careful testing, communication, and the willingness to try again when experiments fail. This career-focused angle makes the book especially useful for classrooms, STEM lessons, and career exploration units.
The hands-on experiments and reference materials at the end make this book even more valuable. Activities such as growing rock candy, making edible sugar glass, and testing chocolate snap allow children to turn their own kitchens into mini laboratories. The colorful illustrations, clear explanations, glossary, and next-step resources all work together to inspire curiosity long after the final page. So You Want To Be A Candy Scientist is a fun, educational, and inspiring read for families, teachers, and young learners who want to discover how science helps make the world a little sweeter.
Pages: 38 | ISBN : 978-1972766590
