So You Want To Be A Toy Designer: A Kids' Guide to Toy Invention, Product Design, Prototyping, and the Creative Minds Who Dream Up the Toys We Can't S (Paperback or Softback)

WINNER of the Literary Titan Gold Book Award
WINNER — 2026 PenCraft Seasonal Book Award, Best Book for Children (Grades 4–6)

From the award-winning So You Want To Be A… Series
GRAND PRIZE — 2026 Purple Dragonfly Book Awards
SILVER AWARD — 2026 CIPA EVVY Book Awards, Children's Nonfiction

The best toy ever made feels like it always existed — but someone had to invent it. So You Want To Be A Toy Designer takes kids ages 10-14 inside one of the most creatively demanding careers in all of product design, and it does not hold back.

This is not a simplified, watered-down look at a fun job. It is a real, honest guide to what toy designers actually do — the years of industrial design training, the child development study, the materials engineering, and the iterative prototyping that happen long before a single toy reaches a shelf. You will discover how designers learn to see the world through a child's eyes while solving complex engineering problems, and why that combination of imagination and technical skill makes toy design one of the most unique professions a young person can pursue.

Inside, you will follow the full design process from first sketch to working prototype to safety testing. You will learn how designers draw on child psychology to understand how play shapes learning at every age. You will see how teams of engineers, creative designers, and manufacturing specialists work together to turn an idea into something a six-year-old picks up, plays with for hours, and refuses to put down. And you will meet the visionary inventors whose toys became the defining objects of childhood for generations.

But this book goes further than most career guides for kids. It explores the real skills toy designers build — sketching, 3D modeling, materials science, understanding how small hands interact with objects — and shows what young readers can start doing right now to develop those same abilities. Whether you love to draw, build, tinker, or simply take things apart to understand how they work, this book helps you see how those instincts connect to a real profession.

Illustrated throughout with detailed, engaging artwork, this nonfiction guide treats its readers as equals. It brings the same depth and honesty that boys and girls ages 10-14 and up deserve when they ask a serious question about their future. No talking down. No sugarcoating. Just a clear, fascinating window into the craft behind the toys you grew up loving.

The toy that will define the next generation of childhood has not been designed yet. It is waiting for someone with the curiosity, the craft, and the joy to bring it into the world — and that someone might be you.