Dormia Book

Introducing Alfonso Perplexon, hero of the epic fantasy tale Dormia!

Alfonso Perplexon is an unusual sleeper. He climbs trees, raises falcons, even shoots deadly accurate arrows, all in his sleep. No one can figure out why.
Then one evening a man arrives at Alfonso’s door, claiming to be Alfonso’s long-lost uncle Hill. This uncle tells a fantastical tale: Alfonso’s ancestors hail from Dormia—an ancient kingdom of gifted sleepers—which is hidden in the snowy peaks of the Ural Mountains. According to Hill, Dormia exists thanks to a tree known as the Founding Tree, with roots that pump life into the frozen valley. But the Founding Tree is now dying, and in a matter of days, Dormia faces an icy apocalypse.
Dormia’s salvation lies with the Great Sleeper, who possesses the special powers to enter a sleep trance and grow a new Founding Tree. Hill suspects that Alfonso is just such a person. In fact, Alfonso’s sleeping-self has already hatched this tree. Now the question is: Can Alfonso and his uncle deliver it in time? They must hurry, but they also must be careful not to be followed by Dormia’s age-old enemy, the Dragoonya, who are always hunting for one of the secret entryways into Dormia.
Alfonso agrees to take the tree to Dormia, and thus begins one of the greatest adventures a twelve-year-old boy could ever wish for.

As he woke up from a late afternoon nap, Alfonso blinked open his eyes and discovered that he was perched at the top of a gigantic pine tree – some two-hundred feet above the ground. The view was spectacular. Alfonso could see for miles in every direction and he could even make out his house in the distant hamlet of World’s End, Minnesota. Unfortunately, there was no time to enjoy the view. The small branch that Alfonso stood upon was covered with gleaming snow and creaked dangerously under the pressure of his weight. Icy gusts of wind shook the entire treetop. Alfonso looked down grimly at the ground far below. If he fell, he would most certainly die.
“Oh brother,” muttered Alfonso to himself. “Not again.”

While cowering from a sandstorm on the Sinai Peninsula, Jake Halpern and Peter Kujawinski began talking about the power of sleep and the kingdom of Dormia. Over the years, the friends rendezvoused in a number of odd places. The result was a prolonged boyhood and this book. Today, Peter lives in Brooklyn, New York, and Jake in New Haven, Connecticut.

Publishers Weekly

Twelve-year-old Alfonso Perplexon has a gift, or is it a curse? He possesses "the powers of active sleeping," which allow him to accomplish tasks and fight with superior skill while asleep (he awakens atop a giant pine tree as the book opens). When his self-proclaimed uncle, Hill, appears and tries to persuade Alfonso to travel through the mountains to save the people of Dormia, the boy leaves his family to embark on the journey. Their goal: to deliver the "Dormian bloom" unharmed; if they fail to plant it, the citizens will starve and the Dragoonya, led by evil Nartam (a fallen Dormian), will take over. Their trip is filled with doubt, stemming from Alfonso's encounters with white-eyed Kiril, who causes him to question his companions' motivations. Ultimately, Alfonso's faith and attitude that "sometimes you just have hunches about people" serve him even more than the innate powers of a Great Sleeper. The plot is standard fantasy adventure fare, though nonfiction writer Halpern and debut author Kujawinski offer some compelling battle scenes. Alfonso's quest believably demonstrates that the path home can be the most trying. Ages 10-up. (May)

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