How It All Goes Down
Meet the great King Birtram. He works very, very hard to keep the Kingdom of Binn and all of its constituents in good form. Each day, he goes through all the official state business with the help of old Lord Droon, and then gets down to his real work as king—defending Binn from all those pesky Nizzards.
The Nizzards, a breed of bird that pecks on the Dike Trees surrounding Binn are the king's main threat when it comes to the welfare of his kingdom. That's because Binn is surrounded by water, and those Dike Trees help keep that water at bay, so that Binn doesn't get inundated and Kevin Costner need not roam the postapocalyptic waters in his trimaran.
Each day, King Birtram leads an army of cats in warding off all the Nizzards, and each afternoon, the king rewards himself with a jaunt on his beloved stilts with the pageboy, Eric. You know, standard king stuff.
There's just one problem. And that problem is named Lord Droon. He's a nasty, butt-kissing, two-faced advisor to the king, and he's not a fan of Birtram's stilts-going hobby. So he steals the doohickeys, in the hopes that a stilt-less King might focus more on governing. Except in reality, the loss of his stilts causes Birtram to fall into the mother of all funks.
And everybody knows that when you fall into a funk, your work suffers. A lot. Remember those pesky pecking Nizzards? Well, they take advantage of the lackadaisical governing going on in Binn to really peck away at those poor Dike Trees. Uh oh.
Luckily, just before the kingdom becomes another Atlantis, Eric saves the day by stealing back the king's stilts. And in the end, all is well and our leering old villain, Lord Droon, gets his comeuppance.
Get it? Got it? Awesome. Now, let's take a deeper dive into exactly what happens in the book, and how the King and Eric end up saving the day (with the help of some savvy cats).