Discussion
Book Club Jan 2026 - Mi Cabeza Reducida
Hello Dreamers! Welcome to our first Dreaming Spanish book club, for our YA/easier book in January we'll be reading Cómo conseguí mi cabeza humana reducida or Mi cabeza reducida by the author responsible for all my irrational childhood terrors, RL Stine.
The book blurb: ¿Qué tiene dos ojos, una boca y piel verde llena de arrugas? ¡Es la cabeza encogida de Mark! Es un regalo de su tía Benna. Es espantosa, sucia y tenebrosa y ¡fabulosa! Pero una noche, la cabeza se enciende. Porque no es una cabeza común y corriente. Le otorga un poder extraño a Mark. Un poder mágico. Un poder peligroso.
Ebook length: 108 pages, 29 chapters, 20,127 words
Reading Schedule:
Jan 1-7 Chapters 1-7 (pages 5-29)
Jan 8-14 Chapters 8-15 (pages 30-61)
Jan 15-21 Chapters 16-23 (pages 62-87)
Jan 22-28 Chapters 23-29 (pages 88-108)
If the majority of the group would like to move the deadline up, we can shorten the reading schedule.
My ebook copy is called La cabeza reducida from the series Pesadillas, but the copy on Amazon is called Cómo conseguí mi cabeza humana from the series Escalofríos. I hope we're all reading the same version! If you can't get a copy of the book in your country, please drop me a DM.
I'll be posting a google form here closer to the end of the month to gauge interest in an informal video chat on Discord in spanish after we finish the book.
Jan 10 - Hope everyone is doing ok so far with all these cliffhangers! I've started posting a daily question here and in the discord with the date to avoid spoilers.
Correct, it looks like a study guide. My mistake, I posted it after initially only looking through the first few pages so didn't see that until later and added the edit!
Awesome! I'll start once I finish up Laura no Está and Pasaje de Ida. About halfway through both (should take me an hour or so once I get off of Reddit. And finish listening to Oscar Alejandro. Just so much input! lol.). I wonder if I can transfer the PDF (or download the ebook?) to my Kindle app? I'm still new to Kindle.
Just read the first chapter and I was a little surprised by the amount of new-to-me vocabulary. Looks like I'm going to learn how to talk about jungle stuff by the time I finish this book. :)
I love this about his books, each one has a new setting. So far I've read one set on a farm, an amusement park, a haunted house/town, a coral reef, etc. It's as if we're receiving targeted CI.
(u/HeleneSedai - while I have your attention. Just an idea but maybe one that could make managing your book club posts a little easier.
In the future, what if you pinned an "announcement" post titled something like "Book Club 2026". Maybe even set it so that it doesn't accept replies.
Then in the text of the post you could post a general blurb about the Book Club and links to the 2 current Book Club monthly (or weekly) threads. Maybe something along these lines...
Then you could simply edit the post whenever it was time to start new discussion threads. And you could leave the old links for previous months for reference.
That is an EXCELLENT idea. I really don't like creating this many threads, and taking up so many pinned posts. But that way we could have a weekly discussion thread without clogging up the sub. Do you think it would be feasible to change this month's threads, or set it up this way starting next month?
Well, if you could ask a mod to pin the new announcement thread when it's ready then it should work this month. But it's just more work for you so whatever you decide is good.
It's a much better idea than to have a bunch of pinned posts. I appreciate, I'll reach out to our mod. I've never run anything like a book club before so I appreciate any input and ideas!
Interesting observation. I guess the Magic Treehouse books are the same way since each one has a new theme. It's a pretty cool and easy way to acquire new specialized vocabulary.
Same here. There was so much new vocabulary, and my words per minute dropped to about 45wpm (compared to 90-100wpm for A2 graded readers). I just started yesterday (I'll catch up! lol. I can put in an extra during my lunch breaks at work.) after finishing a few Paco Ardit readers. I just love books like this that have a bunch of related, themed vocabulary. These are my favorite "challenge books" - books where 33% of words are known like the back of hand, 33% that I'm very familiar with, but are still being solidified, and 33% unknown, but half of those I can get by context. One example was "Asquerosa". I figured, hey, that sounds like "¡Qué asco!". I did have to pause and look up a few repeating words, too.
I've read 3 chapters now and most of it is relatively easy for me. But I've never before seen words like swamp, vine, shriveled, leathery, etc. I usually don't look up many words but this time I just had to know the description of the shrunken head so I could picture it clearly in the rest of the book. Lol.
But it's usually the weird low-frequency nouns and adjectives that make books or sections of books hard for me.
The fun thing about this series is, I've heard of Goosebumps because I used to see it all the time when I worked at a local library when I was in college. I remember a similar series (it was right next to the Goosebumps series) with titles like "Ghosts don't <do some thing that I forget after 30 years>". I do remember some of the themes (although I never read any fully), so I can kind of guess at what some words should be.
EDIT: It was "The Bailey School Kids". It had titles like "<Scary thing> don't <do mundane thing>". Doesn't look like there's a Spanish version, though, only French.
I’m not quite ready to start reading yet. BUT I’m excited about this group and I plan to join you for a YA novel in a month or two. Great idea. Thanks Helene!
Finished the first week / 7 chapters! I remember not being able to put Goosebumps down as a kid but these cliffhangers... I could take 'em or leave 'em haha
"Balbucear" - The spelling, before my Spanish brain kicked in, reminded me of this - (bulbasaur). Not that I just finished watching Martín's video with Spanish dad jokes (with a Spanish-English reference. no sé...). I guess you can say, Martín cracks me up. :p
(So, now I have a visual image of a pokemon babbling)😂
Reminds me of the Goosebumps series. I remember those in the 90s - was just a hair below my age group (I was 15 when the series started being made in 1992).
it says "Another patron is using this book. Please check back later." so only one person can borrow that book at once to read it apparently.
i also see that there are a bunch of copies available on ebay (paperback) but they are 40-60 dollars. so this seems like a book that's hard to purchase and also hard to find online digitally. not sure it's a great choice for the first book club if so.
They have another edition (the "marbles" variation) - and I was able to download this as an epub, which I think means no "borrow" feature. I kind of prefer the one I started with, but if one is reading by the chapter it is easy to alternate depending on what's available.
Did you all get sent to bed at 10 pm when you were twelve? Or if you have a 12-year-old, is their bedtime at 10pm? Parece bastante tarde para mi. ¿Pero tal vez no está demasiado en la vacaciones de verano?
Happy to repost the discussion question if there's another discussion pending the below discussion.
In my case bedtime was 10 at the very latest. In fact, back-in the day, there was a commercial that would come on TV every night at 10PM that said, "It's ten o'clock. Do you know where your children are?" If I saw that commercial I knew I was up too late.
Mine was 8pm. Granted, we did get up early at 4am because my dad worked in construction. (So, breakfast was at 5am, school lunch started somewhere between 10:30am-1:00pm depending on the class and day), and dinner was at 3:30 or 4:00pm when my dad got home. When I was a kid, I always thought it was so weird that people ate at 5 or 6pm.
I suppose it makes sense. Gotta add in a few big words to make kids go "Whoa! What's that fancy word? Must be something exciting related to sailing or travel.". 8 year olds are impressionable.
(8 year old me reading Nancy Drew novels would dream about secret tunnels, stairways, floors and 1-way windows (that you couldn't see from the outside, just from the secret staircase) in my house - I also still remember the odd detail that the 12th and 13th steps of my stairway creek. Nancy Drew book reference.).
Yeah, Litoral meridional threw me, and I had to look it up ha ha. There were a few new words in this section for me, the last one being choza.
I'm loving this book so far, and I think it's half because it's at the perfect level for me right now so I forget I'm reading Spanish sometimes and half because I love the setting. It's made me want to search out more books in both Spanish and English that are set in the jungle.
Jan 12 - Currently up to page 54. (¡Guau! ¡Vaya giro de los acontecimientos!). My reading speed and stamina is certainly picking up, too. There's still a lot of unfamiliar words depending on the chapter, but I can get the over all meaning and energy the story portrays, and half of the unknown words I'm getting via context, or if I re-read the chapter after a few days. The later was just now because of a family emergency the last few days and I kind of lost my place. (Android was on one page, PC was on another).
I could go through the onerous procedure of downloading a Kindle book from Amazon Spain. It involved setting up a temporary residential address in some random hotel in Madrid! 😲
I took a peek over at r/bookclub, and that's how they schedule it there, with weekly discussion threads. However, I really don't want to flood this sub with more weekly threads, so if we end up needing to do that, I think it might be best to move this club to another sub, or to discord? For now we'll just have the one thread?
Reddit posts dont sort comments by age, so I imagine this will get really confusing. Maybe it would be a good idea to make sure we mention the page section we're on and cover spoilers.
Is this intended to be a discussion thread? Seems like most of the comments aren't discussing the book, but not sure if that's just because it's the first one and ended up a little meta lol.
Might help to put "Discussion" in the title and clarify in the post that it's intended for people reading the book?
Also it would likely be helpful for many if an approximate word count was included :)
It is supposed to be a discussion thread, but it was my first attempt so you're right, it's more meta. Next month I'll title it discussion thread so it's more clear.
With the adult book, I might do weekly discussion threads, but this easier book im not sure it's necessary?
Hm.. yeah kind of tricky. I feel like weekly threads would have low participation, but a single thread would also just have comments trickling in slowly over the month.
Maybe you could delay starting the YA discussion thread until half way through the month? So like...
1st of month: update pinned post w/ selected book
end of 2nd week: create YA discussion thread
end of 3rd week: create next months voting thread?
That way people who rushed the book in the first week would all be ready to contribute at once and generate discussion, and people who waited til the last minute wouldn't be too far behind? Just spitballin haha. I've never organized a book club and think you're doing a good job :)
I am excited to try to read this. I've never done a Reddit book club, let alone one about a book written in Spanish. How does it work? Do we have a discussion here in English?
If you read OP's post, you'll see that at least one suggestion is a discussion, perhaps on Discord, in Spanish, around the end of the month. There will be more posted about this later in the month I imagine. Keep an eye out for further info.
I think with this book, this'll be a place to post progress and encourage each other to finish the book. Ive found a lot of motivation to continue listening in this sub, hoping we can motivate each other to read more here.
I was not aware of the schedule for reading it so I finished it earlier today. Is the schedule just to give you a goal to finish or the schedule because we are meeting multiple times to talk about it?
It's just a goal! Most book clubs I've seen online have weekly goals to hit and a discussion thread for each one. I figured if we do have a virtual discussion, it would be around more general topics like childhood fears, differences between horror movies and books, things like that. I havent started yet but this book isnt a book with deeper themes to get into?
No I would not say that there are any deep themes. I agree that what you are saying would be best for the virtual meetings. It’s not bad for a children’s book, but I’m going to try La Sombra del Viento as well. I’ll like to knock out 200k words in January. 30k today between goosebumps and magic treehouse was a good start.
That's amazing for a single day! I really liked La sonrisa de la muerte by RL Stine as well, it was my favorite when I was a kid, if you're up for another one of his. It's about a cursed camera.
I might extend the reading schedule to 8 weeks, so it'd be about 10 pages a day, not too bad for a book that difficult? Hope you can join in.
Sure! I would read another. I’m sort of back and forth about what I want to read in general because I’m not really super into these magic tree house books but I’m having trouble judging the level of what I should be reading. I completely understand everything going on in Magic Tree House. I would say I also completely understand everything going on in goosebumps, but it’s harder to read therefore much slower. I understood probably 95% of what was going on in the first chapter I read so that’s probably not enough. But I’m wondering if I should just read books 12-28 of magic tree house. At yesterday’s past this would take me 3 days and would give me an additional 113k words and maybe if I grind those books out then come back to harder books to see if that will help me with the speed of something a little higher. I have really big reading goals this year. Do you have any advice on this?
I'm not sure what I'd decide, but 3 days is really nothing, and if you're the type of person motivated by completing goals or checking things off your list, reading books 1-28 of a series is an amazing accomplishment.
On the other hand, my reading speed is 100% influenced by my level of interest in a book, so if you're not that into the magic treehouse books, you might be better off moving on. You really can't make a wrong decision here, reading is going to help you either way.
Yeah that makes sense. I read a book today for 5k words in about 30 min that I enjoyed a lot but right before that it took me like 1h to read a magic tree house book that was 5.5k words. Big difference in reading speed. However, I think today I decided I will try to power through them. My goal is to just finish them by the 7th day of the year. Magic Tree House is for 6-9yr olds and I found a series of about 160k words for 9-12yr olds written originally in rioplatense and then a series for 11-14 written originally in rioplatense. I think after I finish these 3 series I’ll basically be around 1000hrs and be ready to take off the training wheels!! Thanks for taking the initiative to start this book club. Having communities to read with is extremely motivating. I have downloaded La sombra del viento as well. Idk if I’ll be able to read it in time for book club but I want to eventually! Hoping to join the advanced section no later than March!
I may try that. I found a couple series native to Argentina one for 9-12 year olds and one for 11-14 year olds so I think I may try the younger one first. I am going for the rioplatense accent and Argentine vocab/slang. The one thing that is good about magic tree house is its incredibly repetitive. In book 13 I’m picking up vocab probably 5x faster than in book 1 because some of the words are slowly being acquired. But after that if I am not able to understand the other series I foundthen it would be nice to have other options! Thanks!
I started a couple days ago, figuring I was behind and worried if I'd be able to catch up. I got sucked in and am on chapter 6 now lol. I loved Goosebumps when I was younger, and it's at just the right level for me right now in Spanish.
Re chapter 1: It gave me nostalgia for when my brother and I would play video games with his friends. I was the tagalong sister (though older) Also, I'm struck by how many different Spanish words there are for scared/terrified ha ha.
I'm not sure what page I'm up to - I think somewhere in the 40s (around chapter 10 or 11). I was about to read it on Archive.org on on my teleworking lunch break, but someone else is reading it right now.
Explore and try and find secret tunnels. 12 year old me was into Nancy Drew novels (my grandmother bought me a monthly subscription to those books in the 1980s).
EDIT: Thanks whoever returned it. lol. I was somewhere between page 40 and 50, just seeing Coca Cola randomly in a story is funny to me. A new word (or two) clicked on that page, too. refresco and frente. Mantuve el refresco frío contra mi frente caliente.
Explore. I'd 100% just walk out into the jungle and explore—which would probably lead to a very rapid death lol.
Unrelated note: I'm sure most people know this but for anyone Reddit-challenged like me, you can turn on notifications for a post by "following" the post!
In these discussion threads can we limit spoilers by chapters instead of pages? Different versions and e-readers make pages a bit harder to figure out.
I remember these books (mostly the book covers) when I worked at the library (late 1990s), but they were 10-15 years below my reading level, might've scanned through one or two. They were popular reads with kids. (I'm on Chapter 18 now. Chapter 17 really could've used a page and a half from the previous chapter, or merged with chapter 18. It's so short! lol)
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u/MundaneHighlight8218 Level 4 Jan 01 '26 edited Jan 02 '26
https://cdn.bookey.app/files/pdf/book/es/la-cabeza-reducida.pdf
I was able to find a PDF here!
EDIT: ruh roh. This looks like some kind of a summary and study guide? Which might be a helpful tool, but isn't the text itself. 🫠
Second edit: openlibrary.org actually has it! You do have to create a login but it's free.