Nine-Year-Old in Georgia Writes Books and Owns Company

Kendyl Q was troubled. He had gotten a bad report. He knew he didn’t deserve it and told as much to the woman who was always by his side.

She suggested he prove the one who gave him the report wrong. And, that’s how it began. Within a couple of hours, he wrote four books. In a matter of months, he started a campaign to send clothes, shoes and toys to children in need in Africa. And before the year ended he began a fair to help launch entrepreneurs like himself.

He was only seven years old.

Kendyl, now nine and living in Gwinnett County, Georgia is a published author, competitive athlete and president and CEO of the publishing company, The Best Kid Book. What began as a venture to prove one woman wrong turned into a movement. Now, Kendyl is helping others and has become a mentor for children his age and older.

“I feel proud of myself that I did this,” Kendyl said of the books he wrote and the business he started.

And, it began because of a teacher. Kendyl put it simply: “One day I came back from school and my teacher said I had horrible handwriting and we decided to write books.”

But it wasn’t quite that simple. To be a black male in America is to always be at war. This Kendyl’s mom, Marisa Denee, understood. And though she tries to shield him, she knew someday the walls would come down.

So, she started early, building him up to believe that he is the best and when he was two years old, he began saying he was the best. She did it so well that he doesn’t remember why he started saying it.

“I knew once he walked out the door and encountered this world, they will begin trying to cut him down to the size they want him to be. If he starts from the middle they will bring him down low, but if I start him from high, they will bring him to the middle.”

She can live with that, she said.

But that year when he was seven, Kendyl was made to standout and he came to “recognize his blackness,” Denee said.

One Friday Kendyl’s mom had given him a dollar for ice cream. He told his teacher. But she wasn’t listening to the first-grader. He tried to show her what he had in his hand. But she told him to throw it away.

Kendyl threw the money in the trash. When it was time to get ice cream, Kendyl told the teacher that he had the money, but she told him to throw it away. The teacher told him to get it from the trash.

It was one incident out of many, Denee said.

“It angered me and it hurt him because he didn’t quite understand,” Denee said. When the same teacher told him his writing was bad, Denee decided to show him another way.

“Whenever someone says you’re not good at something, prove them wrong. That’s your revenge,” she told him one day in the car. “Who knows, someday you’ll be a writer and she’ll be reading your books.”

“Mom, that’s a great idea,” Kendyl said. “You and I can write books.”

He said it took him a couple of hours to write the first four books.

“I wrote it in my journal and gave it to my assistant and she did the rest,” Kendyl said.

His assistant, Denee, found the pictures, edited the texts and did the layouts. His books, Extinct Non-Extinct Animals and Their Skills; All About Animals Book; Your Dog, and The Talking Sabertooth are sold online at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, Books-A-Million. They are also in the Gwinnett County Library and at the Apex Museum in Atlanta.

“I think writing for him, was his outlet,” Denee said of the child she has had to raise by herself. Kendyl’s dad bowed out even before his birth. But Kendyl knows who his dad is. They talk on the phone sometimes.

Still, when he mentions the people who inspired him, besides his mom, only one man came to mind― Dan Moore, the founder of the Apex Museum. Kendyl calls him Mr. Dan.

Moore met the mother and son when they were touring his museum. He sells Kendyl’s books in the bookstore, even encouraging parents to buy them by telling them about the seven-year-old who wrote them. It worked. Within the past year, he said he has had to reorder Kendyl’s books five times, especially Extinct Non-Extinct Animals and Their Skills.

“I think they are excellent, especially for a seven-year-old,” Moore said. “What seven-year-old comes up with writing about extinct and nonextinct animals and their survival skills? That was impressive to me.”

Kendyl said that was his first book, and it took him the longest to write.

“I had to find the information,” Kendyl said. “It probably took an hour or so.”

Together mother and son would go over the accounting books for The Best Kid Books, checking the inventory and calculating the profits – 10 percent of which goes into KenQ Kares Campaign where he collects items for the needy.

The money also helps with the Children’s Entrepreneur Fair, which targets children, seven to 12 years old, who are aspiring to become entrepreneurs or who have already started their own businesses. The fair, held at Apex, was set up with booths, presentations and a speaker.

One of its success story involves a child who wanted to sell dog biscuits but didn’t know where to begin. Kendyl, who markets his own books through social media platforms, helped the boy with his idea. The following year the child won $2,000 and a connection to help him sell his dog biscuits, Denee said.

The campaign and the fair were Kendyl’s ideas, Denee said. She is only his assistant in business, she said. But when she needs to take over as mom, she is uncompromising, making sure he’s in bed by eight on school nights; that he does his school work before he gets to play. For fun, the reserved A-B student watches comedies, plays with his pit bull (Champ) and his guinea pig (Gucci), and does math in his head.

But while writing has become his business, sports, he says, is his life.

Kendyl began playing sports when he was two.  He said he plans to play pro football and basketball and to win 27 gold medals. But, his immediate goal is to get through fourth grade.