Coraline Y La Puerta Secreta Capitulo 1 -

This is the primal state of childhood: the rainy Saturday afternoon where nothing is on TV and your toys are dead. By establishing this profound boredom, Gaiman makes the reader want the secret door to open. We need the escape as much as she does. The centerpiece of Chapter 1 is, of course, the bricked-up doorway in the drawing room. Coraline’s mother shows it to her with the dismissive explanation that it used to lead to the other flat, but now it’s just a wall.

It is a brilliant anti-climax. Yet, Gaiman plants the seed of the other mother here. The text notes that the hallway beyond is oscuro y vacío (dark and empty), but Coraline swears she can see something moving in the shadows. This is the first lie of the other world. It pretends not to exist. No discussion of Chapter 1 is complete without Mr. Bobo (called el señor Bobo —a name that feels even more ridiculous in Spanish). He lives upstairs and speaks in a broken, frantic whisper about his mice. coraline y la puerta secreta capitulo 1

Her father is a neglectful cook (those leek and potato recipes sound terrible even in Spanish: patatas y puerros ). Her mother is distracted and busy with work. It rains. The neighbors are eccentric but useless to a young girl: the mustachioed Mr. Bobo (who claims to be training mice for a circus) and the aging actresses, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, who only talk about their dead dog and their brief theater glory days. This is the primal state of childhood: the

Por: El Rincón de los Libros Olvidados

If you are reading this book for the first time (perhaps with a young reader, or perhaps you are learning Spanish and chose this as your gateway text), do not skip past the slow burn of Chapter 1. It is here that Gaiman, and translator Mónica Faerna, lay the psychic groundwork for the horror to come. The first chapter is almost aggressively dull, and that is the point. We meet Coraline Jones, a "exploradora" (explorer) of her own new home—a creaky, old split-house that has been divided into flats. Unlike the 2009 film adaptation, which gives her a rollicking adventure immediately, the book’s first chapter forces us to live in Coraline’s frustration. The centerpiece of Chapter 1 is, of course,

But we, the readers, know the truth. The door is not just a wall. The mice are not just circus animals. And Coraline’s boredom will soon become the most dangerous luxury she ever had.