Beware The Smart Kids By Matthew J. Kushin

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Beware The Smart Kids: A Novel by Matthew J. Kushin

Beware the Smart Kids is my debut novel. It was awarded the 2025 Paterson Prize for Books for Young People in the Grade 7-12 category. It’s a coming of age story about the bond between a troublemaker teenager and a teacher turned felon, and what happens when we pursue happiness in unlikely places.

Beware the Smart Kids 3D cover

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Beware the Smart Kids Synopsis

Lost. Miserable. Lonely. Desperate for something more. That’s life for teenager Nolan Sussman until an ex-convict who knows the 5 secrets to happiness returns to town.

“Beware the Smart Kids is a story for teenagers…those who feel invisible, those who are hiding their pain, those who think they’ll never find the answers, those who are yearning for something but don’t know what. And it’s a story for ‘former teenagers’ who are now trying to raise and love a teenager, but who have likely forgotten the hard parts of being one.” 

– Margaret Standafer, best-selling and award-winning author of the coming-of-age novel, I Know an Old Lady. 

Misfit troublemaker Nolan Sussman badly wants two things before high school ends: the attention of Gabi Meyers and the return of his runaway sister, Sarah.  

But when his latest prank goes awry, Nolan is nearly expelled. He’s forced to spend his summer doing yard work for Mr. Barno, a reclusive former high school teacher who spent 25 years in prison.  

Nolan soon finds that despite the tragic mistake that landed Mr. Barno in prison, the old man has something even more elusive than Gabi and Sarah—happiness.  

Now, Nolan is determined to learn how to be happy, too. It’s his chance to matter. His shot at a future. But secrets in Mr. Barno’s past are preventing the once-beloved educator from having the will to ever teach again. Secrets the two outcasts will have to face together.   

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A Social Media Education Blog by Matthew J. Kushin, Ph.D.