Resguardo | eBook

Yerins first morning in the airports lost-property room ends with three new entries in the register. A blue sweater, large, a little dirty. A black phone with a dead battery and a small photo of a child on the back. And a box: plain, closed, heavy for its size, with nothing inside but paper. For that one she writes a single word: Papeles.

She has been in the country four months and still asks people to say things again, more slowly. The room runs on one rule she cant argue with: anything unclaimed by the last day of the month leaves in a single lot, and nobody sees it again. Somebody, somewhere, is missing that box. Can Yerin find them before the month runs out?

Written for A1 readers (CEFR) and up. If you know the everyday core of Spanish and can follow the present tense, you can read this, because the whole novel stays there. It is original fiction set in Mexico, composed at this level from its first page, and much of it is told through documents: the register itself, a shift roster with no name in her slot, a school invitation from 2000. Each chapter closes with a page of Yerins diary, a short language note, a glossary in Spanish and English, and a few questions to think about.

La Banda is four novels set in one airport, each following a different person through the same building and each complete on its own. Across the four, the Spanish climbs from A1 to A2.