Cello is in crisis. Princess Ko’s deception of her people has emerged and the Kingdom is outraged; the Jagged Edge Elite have taken control, placing the Princess and two members of the Royal Youth Alliance under arrest and ordering their execution; the King’s attempts to negotiate their release have failed; Color storms are rampant; and nobody has heard the Cello wind blowing in months.
Ophelia, a timid eleven-year-old girl grieving her mother, suspends her disbelief in things non-scientific when a boy locked in the museum where her father is working asks her to help him complete an age-old mission.
On Wednesday, Thelma is bored—so she decides to become a queen. She makes the royal announcement on Thursday and chooses the royal pets on Friday. But she needs a castle to keep the pets, and royally qualified trainers to tame them, and of course someone to clean up after the messes. It’s enough to give a queen a royal headache. And when Thelma realizes that there aren’t enough beds to hold her royal staff, she flings off her crown and decides that maybe being a regular girl isn’t so boring after all.
King Matt the First is the story of a boy who becomes king and sets out to reform his kingdom. He decrees that all children are to be given a piece of chocolate at the end of each day. He visits faraway lands and befriends cannibal kings. Whenever his ministers tell him something’s impossible, he puts them in jail. He disguises himself as a soldier and becomes a hero. But, as in real life, fantasy is tempered by reality: Matt’s fellow kings become jealous of his success–and in the end, Matt falls, although it’s clear that he was the greatest king there ever was.
Could an animal really hold an important office? It’s happened: Incitatus the horse was made a consul in the Roman Empire. He had a marble stable, eighteen servants, and ate oats mixed with flakes of gold. Then there was Saur, a dog declared king during the days of the Vikings, who signed decrees with his paw. And one can’t forget Pigasus, nominated as presidential candidate by a group of Vietnam War protestors, or Clay Henry the goat and his descendants, who became mayors of a small Texas town. The government truly has gone to the dogs–and to the cats, mules, and elephants too–as shown in this fascinating and engaging history.