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II. Un niño de jengibre
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«¡ !», . « ».
An American folk tale retold for A1
The Gingerbread Man El hombre de jengibre
Anonymous
This is a retelling of the American folk tale of the gingerbread boy in simple Spanish, not the original text: a MovaReader adaptation for readers who are just starting to read in Spanish. In the catalog it is A1: about 3,500 words told in the present tense, with sentences of 6 words on average. 11 short chapters about a gingerbread boy who jumps out of the oven and runs away from everyone he meets, followed by a second old tale, Johnny-Cake, about a corn cake that does the same.
- A1
- 3 473 words
- 1 hour
Will this text hold?
A1
This text
You can manage it at A1: sentences are short, the story stays in the present tense, and the boasts He huido de... and Corro más que... come back at every meeting, so by the third time they read without translation.
Check this passageA2
With room to spare
At A2 both tales read almost without translation; only words like guadaña or zanja may stop you.
Start readingThe average sentence has 6 words: the story moves in short present-tense statements, and more than a quarter of the words are the characters’ lines in quotation marks. Long words are rare: a word of 9 letters or more comes up about once in 290 words. The difficulty is even: chapters I-X average 5-7 words per sentence, and only the last one, XI, reaches about 8, because the corn cake shouts its long boast to the fox three times over. Full texts in Spanish start at B2 in the catalog: Unamuno’s Mist has 13 words per sentence. Hence A1. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 3 473
- words
- 6
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. St. Nicholas Magazine, May 1875 (Internet Archive)
What it is about, without the ending
A little old man and a little old woman live in a small house at the edge of a wood, and the only thing they lack is a child. One baking day the old woman cuts a boy out of gingerbread dough and puts him in the oven. When she opens the door, he jumps out and runs off down the road, calling out that he has run away from everyone and can run away from you too. The old couple, a barn full of threshers, men cutting hay in a field, a cow and a pig all give chase. The second tale follows a pan de maíz, a round corn cake, that rolls out of another oven and past well-diggers, ditch-diggers, a bear and a wolf. How each run ends is not revealed here.
Compare two places
El hombre de jengibre
VI. La vaca y el cerdo
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«», . «¡ ! . , ».
. . . ¡, , !
. :
«¡ !»
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«¡!», . «¡! ¡ !»
Choose an underlined word.
Raisin eyes and a chubby body
Le pone dos ojos de pasas: “she gives him two raisin eyes”, literally “puts two eyes of raisins on him”; le stands for the gingerbread boy, and de tells what something is made of, just as in pan de jengibre. Gordito is gordo with the affectionate -ito, so “chubby” rather than “fat”. ¡Qué niño tan bonito!: qué, a noun, tan and an adjective make “what a pretty boy!”.
Huele: the verb oler
Huele algo dulce: “she smells something sweet”. Oler takes an h and changes o to ue in the stressed forms: huelo, hueles, huele, but olemos. In ¡Qué bien huele! the same verb turns around: “how good it smells!”, now about the cake. Pastelito is pastel with the small, friendly -ito: the cow is sweet-talking her food. Patas are an animal’s legs; a person has piernas.
Chapters
Translation while you read
The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.
Reader
€1 a month
Reader translates the whole sentence where simple words add up to an unfamiliar phrase, as in sí que puedo, “yes, I can”, or ¡A por él!, “after him!”.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
An adaptation, not the original text. It is MovaReader’s own retelling in simple Spanish of two old tales. Chapters I-VII follow The Gingerbread Boy, an anonymous American folk tale printed in St. Nicholas magazine in May 1875; chapters VIII-XI follow Johnny-Cake from Joseph Jacobs’s English Fairy Tales, 1890, where the runaway is a corn cake. The language and length have changed: the present tense, 6 words per sentence on average, and the chases opened up into short conversations, so the 11 chapters, about 3,500 words, run more than twice the length of the two tales together. The episodes of the sources remain in their order: in the first tale the old couple, the threshers, the mowers, the cow, the pig and the fox; in the second the little boy who forgets the oven, the well-diggers, the ditch-diggers, the bear, the wolf and the fox. The rhyme Run, run, as fast as you can comes from later retellings and is in neither source, so it is not here either. The full texts of the tales are not in the catalog.
Is there an audiobook?
No, there is no audio version of this tale on MovaReader; the text is read on screen. Tap an unfamiliar word and its translation appears: here that will mostly be words such as granero (barn) or azadas (hoes).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes: whole-sentence translation comes with the Reader plan. But sentences in this book average 6 words, so you will rarely need a whole one translated: mostly lines like ¡Eso lo vamos a ver! or ¿Por qué no vienes un poco más cerca?, where the words are simple but the pattern is not. Without the plan you can translate single words until the daily limit runs out.
How many hours does it take?
About an hour for both tales: the pace of someone who still translates new words, not a native speaker’s. There are 11 chapters of roughly 250 to 450 words each, so a chapter is easy to read in one sitting.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is even from start to finish: chapters I-X average 5-7 words per sentence. Only the last chapter, XI, runs a little longer at about 8, because the corn cake repeats its whole boast to the fox three times; the words are the same each time, so it does not read harder.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. After you sign in, the reader remembers where you stopped and which words you opened. The contents on this page also open any of the 11 chapters directly, for example chapter VIII, “Otro cuento: el pan de maíz”, where the second tale begins.