I. Un grano en la granja
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«¿ ?», . «¿ ?».
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. . , .
« », . « , . . ».
«¡!», . «¡ !».
Three farm folk tales retold for A1
The Little Red Hen and Other Farm Tales La gallinita roja y otros cuentos de la granja
Anonymous
This is a retelling of three folk tales in simple Spanish, not the original texts: a MovaReader adaptation for readers who are just starting to read in Spanish. In the catalog it is A1: about 3,400 words told in the present tense, with sentences of 5 words on average. 9 short chapters: four for The Little Red Hen, who finds a grain of wheat and asks the pig, the cat and the rat for help; three for Henny-Penny, a hen who is sure the sky is falling; and two for The Three Billy Goats Gruff and the troll under the bridge.
- A1
- 3 398 words
- 1 hour
Will this text hold?
A1
This text
You can manage it at A1: sentences are short, the tales stay in the present tense, and words like harina or molinero translate with a tap.
Check this passageA2
With room to spare
At A2 the three tales read almost without translation: a quick way to build speed before longer texts in Spanish.
Start readingThe average sentence has 5 words: the tales move in short present-tense statements, refrains such as “Yo no” come back at every step, and about a fifth of the text is the animals’ lines in quotation marks. A word of 9 letters or more comes up about once in 90 words: there are only 37 of them, and 8 are the word gallinita itself. The difficulty is even: each of the 9 chapters has 5-6 words per sentence. The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats, also A1 in the catalog, has the same 5 words per sentence. Full texts in Spanish start at B2 in the catalog: Unamuno’s Mist has 13 words per sentence and one long word in fourteen. Hence A1. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 3 398
- words
- 5
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. Project Gutenberg
What it is about, without the ending
On a farm a little red hen finds a grain of wheat and learns that it can become bread. She asks the pig, the cat and the rat to help her plant it, cut it, carry it to the mill and bake it, and every time she hears the same answer. On another farm something falls on the head of a hen called Trula, and she sets off to tell the king that the sky is falling, gathering a cockerel, a duck, a goose and a turkey on the way, until a friendly fox offers to show them a shorter road. And three billy goats who want to grow fat on the hillside have to cross a bridge where a hungry troll lives. How each tale ends is not revealed here.
Compare two places
La gallinita roja y otros cuentos de la granja
VI. Por el camino
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«¿?», .
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«¡ , !», . «¡ !».
Choose an underlined word.
It tastes of nothing
Saber a means “to taste of”: no sabe a gusano, “it doesn’t taste like a worm”. Lo stands for the thing the hen has found and goes before the verb: lo muerde, “she bites it”, lo lleva, “she carries it”. Se hace tells how something is made without saying who makes it: con la harina se hace pan, “bread is made from flour”. Si lo plantas, crece: si with the present tense, “if you plant it, it grows”.
Talking to a group
When the animals speak to several others at once they use the vosotros form: ¿Adónde vais?, “where are you all going?”. Os is the matching object pronoun: ¿Os lo enseño?, “shall I show it to you?”, where lo is el camino. A question in the present tense often makes an offer like this one. Por aquí no se va al palacio: se va says how one gets somewhere, “this is not the way to the palace”. Tener que with an infinitive means “to have to”: tenemos que decirle, “we have to tell him”.
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 No sabe a nada bueno, “it doesn’t taste of anything good”.
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 three folk tales, each taken from a printed English version in the public domain: The Little Red Hen as retold and illustrated by Florence White Williams (Saalfield, 1918); Henny-Penny from Joseph Jacobs’s English Fairy Tales (1890); and The Three Billy-Goats Gruff, collected in Norway by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, in George Webbe Dasent’s translation Popular Tales from the Norse (1859). All three books are on Project Gutenberg. The language has changed: the sources tell the tales in the past tense, while the retelling uses the present tense, 5 words per sentence on average and plenty of dialogue, and Jacobs’s rhyming names become Spanish ones (Henny-Penny is Trula, Cocky-Locky is Galo). The episodes remain in order: the seed mistaken for a worm, the sickle, the crying chicks, the mill and the baking day; the blow on the head, the cockerel, the duck, the goose, the turkey and the fox; the three goats crossing the bridge one by one. The full texts of these tales are not in the catalog.
Is there an audiobook?
No, there is no audio version of these tales on MovaReader; the text is read on screen. Tap an unfamiliar word and its translation appears: here that will mostly be farm words such as trigo (wheat), hoz (sickle) or molino (mill).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes: whole-sentence translation comes with the Reader plan. But sentences in these tales average 5 words, so you will rarely need a whole one translated: mostly lines like Por aquí no se va al palacio or Pesa tanto que el puente hace ruido bajo sus patas, 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 all three tales: the pace of someone who still translates new words, not a native speaker’s. There are 9 chapters of roughly 250 to 450 words each, so any one of the tales is easy to read in a single sitting.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is even from start to finish: each of the 9 chapters averages 5-6 words per sentence. Chapter VII, in the fox’s cave, is the lightest at about 5; the baking day in chapter IV and the meeting on the road in chapter VI run slightly longer at about 6.
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 9 chapters directly, for example chapter V, “La gallina Trula”, where the second tale begins.