Milo is bored at school; he sees education as dull work. Gifted with a visit to the Lands Beyond, he discovers the wonders of words and numbers, the dazzling beauty of the countryside, and the fascinating and fantastical places and people. These experiences jar him out of his complacency. He finds that learning can be fascinating and useful and that an appreciation for the colorful world around him never gets old.

First, Milo visits the city of Dictionopolis, where words grow on trees and the people love the expressiveness and wit of communicating. It’s a revelation: Milo sees how interesting and endlessly inventive conversation can be. Later, he visits Digitopolis, the city that mines numbers and distributes them to the kingdom so people can do the calculations they need in their daily lives. Milo discovers the sheer power of numbers, how they can reckon accurately even with impossible things like infinity, and how they add precision and logic to complex problems.

During Milo’s visit, the kingdom is split between those who feel that words are more important and those who reckon that numbers are supreme.