Where do kings come from?

I’m working on a political satire for beginning readers that is sure to never sell, thus maintaining my position as a starving artist. So I’m trying to figure out how to give it away for free and still pay the light bill.

It’s called “King Dick”-about a squirrel who collects taxes in nuts and the history behind it is solid I tell you. Have you ever wondered where kings came from? First there were a bunch of hunter-gatherers sitting around the campfire discussing what the tribe should do. Some were especially respected for their wisdom and generosity and so were defacto leaders. Unless they screwed up, in which case they were unceremoniously (and sometime ceremoniously) dumped. Democracy is in both our DNA and collective unconscious.

But back to Dick, just a regular squirrel who collects nuts, lounges about on tree limbs and hurls curses at passersby. (The biology is solid, too; squirrels really do this.) The rats convince Dick to be king, because they intend to be the power behind the throne.

They give him a king hat and point out that he has the best tree house so he should be king. What a strange coincidence that the best house in any neighborhood is often owned by a Dick!