Making La casa de La Dentista Accessible to Beginners
Feb 01, 2024
La casa de La Dentista has been around for a long time.
It’s a 114-page graphic novel about Carolina, a girl who lives on an island where pretty much everyone knows that the Legend of the Dentist is just a story invented to scare children into brushing their teeth.
Everyone except Carolina.
She’s convinced there’s something much darker happening on the island. And she thinks the abandoned house across the street might have something to do with it.
For years, Spanish teachers have used La casa de La Dentista with their students. But there was always one problem with the original print edition:
It was written at Novice High.
We wanted beginning Spanish students to be able to read the same story. So we went back and rewrote the book at Novice Low.
How do you make the Spanish simpler without making the story simpler?
That was the whole challenge.
We didn’t want a summary of La casa de La Dentista. We didn’t want a shortened “easy reader” that removed everything interesting. And we definitely didn’t want to flatten Carolina, Mía, La Dentista, or the mystery that makes the book worth reading in the first place.
We wanted beginning students to read the actual 114-page graphic novel.
So the story and artwork stayed. The language changed.
The goal of the Novice Low rewrite was not to make every sentence sound like a textbook exercise. It was to strip the language down far enough that a first-year Spanish student could follow what was happening while still feeling like they were reading a real story.
And because this is a graphic novel, the words never have to do all the work by themselves.
Students aren’t reading the Spanish in isolation
If Carolina is terrified, you can see it on her face. If she walks into a creepy abandoned house, you can see the house. If something strange is happening, the illustrations are constantly giving students clues about what the language means.
That visual context matters enormously for beginning readers.
It lets us keep telling a bigger, stranger, more suspenseful story than you might expect from a Novice Low Spanish reader.
And students always have a glossary
The print edition includes a per-page Spanish-to-English glossary.
That’s important. Novice Low doesn’t mean students magically know every word on the page.
The glossary is there when they need it, while the illustrations and repeated language do as much of the comprehension work as possible.
Who is the Novice Low edition for?
We recommend this version for Spanish 1 and 2.
The story itself is light horror. Think more along the lines of Goosebumps than actual horror. Because of the themes and suspense, we recommend it for middle school and up.
And if your students are ready for more challenging Spanish, the original Novice High print edition still exists.
That’s really the point: the level of the Spanish shouldn’t decide whether a student gets access to a good story.
Reading digitally?
Wooly subscribers can also read our graphic novels digitally, where the dialogue is available at four proficiency levels: Novice Low, Novice Mid, Novice High, and Intermediate Low.
The digital reader also includes quick glossary access, professionally recorded audio, and page or panel viewing.
Learn about Wooly graphic novels →The story doesn’t end at the house
If your students finish La casa de La Dentista and want to know what happens next, there’s a full sequel: La ciudad de La Dentista.
The print edition of Book 2 is also written at Novice Low, so students can continue directly into the next part of Carolina and Mía’s story without making a sudden jump in reading level.
See La ciudad de La Dentista →
Want to read La casa de La Dentista with your students?
The current Novice Low print edition is a 114-page, full-color graphic novel designed for beginning Spanish readers. The store page has current availability and purchasing options.
See La casa de La Dentista →
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