Ratón Pérez
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A complete children’s tale for B2
Ratón Pérez Ratón Pérez
Luis Coloma, 1911
Luis Coloma’s complete original tale in the 1911 edition, not an adaptation. In the catalog it is B2: about 3,800 words and 28 words per sentence on average. Young King Buby loses his first tooth, and Ratón Pérez takes him on a night journey through the mouse tunnels of Madrid. It is a single chapter, about one hour of reading.
- B2
- 3 836 words
- 1 hour
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the mock-learned chronicle of the opening will slow you down, with its names of old chroniclers and forms like sábese, quedóse and á for a; sentences of 28 words ask for patience.
B1B2
This text
You can manage it at B2: the plot is simple, the tale moves in short scenes with dialogue, and the long sentences can be read slowly, translating single words.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the tale reads freely; only the irony and the names of old Madrid shops, rackets and biscuits still need a note.
Start readingThe average sentence has 28 words, inside the B2 range of 13-30 for complete texts, and one word in thirteen has 9 letters or more (7.8%), fewer than the one in ten that the catalog’s C1 books show. That is far from the A1 retelling of the same tale in the catalog, which has 7 words per sentence. Coloma wrote for a child, but in the long, period sentences of 1890s Spanish, with subordinate clauses and mock-learned asides: the sentence length matches Lazarillo de Tormes (30) and La edad de oro (30) and is nearly double that of Quiroga’s Cuentos de la selva (15). The difficulty is fairly even: the tale opens at about 29 words per sentence, and the last stretch, from the moment Gilito’s mother wakes, eases to about 25 with 6.0% long words; the night journey has the most long words (8.7%), thanks to the shop names and foreign words of old Madrid. Hence B2. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 3 836
- words
- 28
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
- 1911
- Razón y Fe
Razón y Fe, 1911. Project Gutenberg
What it is about, without the ending
Long ago King Buby I, a gentle child who is a friend of poor children and a protector of mice, loses his first milk tooth. Following the custom of the court, he writes a polite letter to Ratón Pérez and puts it under his pillow with the tooth. That night the mouse appears in a straw hat and gold spectacles, turns the king into a mouse like himself and leads him through the hidden tunnels of Madrid: past the elegant home of the mouse family under a grocer’s shop, past a sleeping cat called Don Gaiferos, up to the attic where a poor boy named Gilito lives. What the king sees there troubles him deeply; how it changes him is not revealed here.
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Ratón Pérez
Ratón Pérez
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Choose an underlined word.
Old spellings, same words
In this 1911 text a is written á (Á lo cual respondió) and fue and vio carry accents (fué, vió). Verbs also take their pronoun after them, as bookish Spanish then did: incorporóse is se incorporó and quitóse is se quitó. Read them as the modern forms and the scene is plain: a small mouse in a straw hat bows and waits for the king to speak.
A comparison that waits for its verb
The long sentence follows the frame Con la rapidez con que..., así...: “as fast as telegraph poles flash past a train window, so the king saw the kitchen pass”. The main verb, vió pasar, only arrives after the comparison. The three dots that end several sentences are Coloma’s way of slowing the scene down while the cat sleeps.
Chapters
Translation while you read
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In “Con la rapidez con que se ven en el día de hoy desfilar los palos del telégrafo por las ventanillas de un tren, así vió pasar el rey Buby ante sus ojos...” the main verb arrives only after the whole comparison: translating the whole sentence in Reader shows at once who saw what.
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s adaptation: Luis Coloma’s complete tale, from the first chronicle lines to the last sentence. The reader follows the 1911 edition (Razón y Fe, Madrid), with the spelling of 1911 kept (á, fué, vió); the illustrations, the 1911 dedication and the publisher’s advertisements are left out, so the text is only the tale itself. It comes from Project Gutenberg. The catalog also has an easy A1 retelling of the same tale.
Is there an audiobook?
Ratón Pérez has no audiobook on MovaReader: here the tale is read on screen. The translation appears when you tap a word, and you will need it most for rare words such as cartujano or rescoldo.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. Here it helps most in the long period sentences, for example “Con la rapidez con que se ven en el día de hoy desfilar los palos del telégrafo por las ventanillas de un tren, así vió pasar el rey Buby...”. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole tale takes about 1 hour: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. It is a single chapter of about 3,800 words, so it fits into one evening.
Where does the text get easier?
It is fairly even. The opening chronicle runs at about 29 words per sentence and the night journey has the most long words (8.7%). The last stretch, from the moment Gilito’s mother wakes, is the easiest: about 25 words per sentence and 6.0% long words.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. Once you sign in, the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened, so you can stop and come back. The tale is one chapter, and it opens from the contents on this page.