Welcome to the World of Dormia
Ordinary sleepwalkers wake up in the living room or in the kitchen eating ice cream. But twelve-year-old Alfonso Perplexon tends to wake up tightrope-walking along a set of power lines or clinging to the top of a massive, wind-blown pine tree. No one in his hometown of World's End, Minnesota has seen anything like it, until one wintry evening an old man arrives at Alfonso's doorstep with an astounding explanation.
The old man introduces himself as Hill, Alfonso's long lost uncle. He spins a wild tale of Dormia, a kingdom hidden in the faraway Ural Mountains whose people have mastered the art of "wakeful sleeping." Dormia is now in grave danger, says Hill, and its survival depends on a mysterious plant called a Dormian Bloom. Once every few centuries, someone of Dormian descent is born with the ability to grow such a plant. Hill suspects this person is Alfonso. But the hour is late, and already they are being hunted.
Alfonso's journey takes him to an iceberg fortress in the Bering Sea, across the North Pole, and then deep into the snow-bound Ural Mountains. And along the way, he realizes that saving Dormia means discovering the secrets that lurk in his own sleep.
*Dormia* at Houghton Mifflin's website
The second book in the Dormia series -- World's End -- will be out in December of 2010. Stay tuned!