""Everybody (well nearly everybody) knows how Jack and his mother were so poor that they were almost starving and had to sell their cow. And everybody knows how Jack was swindled and left with just a handful of beans which his other angrily threw out of the window and which grew into a BEANSTALK. However not everybody knows exactly what happened to Jack when he climbed the beanstalk and how he found Beanland and the Bean people who were being robbed terrified and sometimes murdered by the Dark Riders - henchmen of the GIANT! And how Jack somehow found himself accompanied by Dilly ? a mall Bean-girl who had not told her mother where she was going. Setting off to rid Beanland of the Giant Jack and Dilly get into all sorts of trouble. They are relentlessly pursued by mysterious hooded Dark Riders. They rescue Ambrose the ?neurotic? donkey from certain death. They are captured and tried by the Trolls and their two-headed King. They survive the whispering desert.""