On Saturday, June 16, Chental was the guest speaker at the annual Literary Brunch for the Read Up! book club in East Orange, New Jersey.

On March 31st, 2012, the Monmouth County, New Jersey Chapter of Little Sistah’s In the Know, a national book club, met to celebrate Women’s History Month. Led by Yvette Anderson, they honored women of our past and present through various skits and other presentations. The girls were honored to have, as their guests, Author Chental-Song Bembry of the children’s book series ‘The Honey Bunch Kids’, Author Ms. Carmen Rubin of the children’s book ‘Ashti Meets Birdman Al’, Ms. Della Crews of New Jersey News 12, as well as the founder of LSK, Ms. Dawn Florence. The girls also celebrated a rights of passage by becoming Young Ladies of Distinction.

Artists aren’t typically what comes to mind when you think of entrepreneurs—yet, their pursuits are no less commercial in nature than the most cold-eyed business professional. Chental-Song Bembry, the 15-year-old writer and illustrator behind The Honey Bunch Kids, and her mother, Holly Glover, who helps her daughter run the literary business out of their home, recognize that. Ultimately, the duo hope to “launch a dominant brand that would include the images of [Bembry’s] characters being sold on personal items.

First, though, there are reading and uplifting life lessons to promote. The Honey Bunch Kids tells the tale of a group of African-American middle-schoolchildren who become friends after they miss the bus on their first day and end up having to walk to school in the rain. Bembry has recently finished the third book in the series, all of which are available at www.thehoneybunchkids.net. 

The young author, not surprisingly, is a passionate advocate for literacy; she’s frequently booked at libraries and schools to help promote reading to children, and was recently named Youth Ambassador for two literacy organizations, LiteracyNation and Mission EduCare. Her work is already beginning to garner acclaim. In 2011, Bembry was brought into the funding-and-mentoring program of 100 Urban Entrepreneurs, the nonprofit foundation that offers $10,000 in startup grants and eight weeks of mentoring to talented young businesspeople nationwide. (She is by far the youngest entrepreneur with whom the organization has ever partnered.)

On February 6, in recognition of her community-literacy efforts, Bembry was named a “Hometown Hero” by the New Jersey Nets, part of the team’s celebration of Black History Month. She was brought onto the court during the team’s game against the Chicago Bulls, and The Honey Bunch Kids images were displayed on the arena’s screens. “It was such an honor,” she says. “Being on the floor was an experience I’ll never forget.”

While she and her mother work to build the brand as a licensing concern, meanwhile, Bembry has her sights set on turning The Honey Bunch Kids into a long-running series for boys and girls between ages 7 and 12. “Although my books are humorous, children will gain valuable life lessons from them,” she says. “The feedback I get from kids is what inspires me to keep writing.”