Adventures in Numberland

Adventures in Numberland is a fairy story about numbers in life and in business. The target audience is adult but will work for older children as an introduction to business and the importance of numeracy.

The hero is Piff, the wood-cutters daughter, a beautiful, strong-minded young girl who is thrown out of her home by her fat and lazy step-mother. Alone in the forest, Piff meets the fairy, Numberlina, who decides to help Piff by showing her how useful numbers are and how powerful they can be. In return, Numberlina wants a share of the profits and help in dealing with the Anathemath, an evil and confusing spirit, shrouded in a noxious green cloud.

Piff develops the wood-cutting business successfully, moving into furniture manufacturing and finally ship building. In the process, she learns how useful all the numbers (including pi, phi, and e) can be. She attracts the unwelcome attention of Prince Baltigral who owns almost everything in Numberland. Baltigral is a greedy prince who has enlisted the help of the Anathemath, to mislead, suppress, and exploit the population of Numberland.

In the course of her commercial career, Piff learns that mathematics has many practical uses - e.g., for making perfect right angles in the design of furniture, for measuring distances, for designing buildings, and for calculating interest.

In the end, there is a final cataclysmic political and numerical struggle between Piff supported by Numberlina on one side and Prince Baltigral aided by the Anathemath on the other.