La Ciudad de las Bestias: Capítulo Uno - La Pesadilla

Alexander Cold despertó al amanecer sobresaltado por una pesadilla. (Alexander Cold woke at dawn frightened by a nightmare.)

I've just started the first chapter of one of the very few YA fantasy (I think? It might just be general adventure) novels that I was able to find at the Austin City Library branch that boasted the most Spanish books. As I suspected, the main problem appears to be that 90% of the books available, at least in elementary and YA categories of fiction, are translated from English. (Two were translated from German, which was at least nice for the novelty.)

This is apparently the first YA book by the author, Isabel Allende. I confess that I am slightly bemused to find that the protagonist is named Alexander Cold--his parents are Lisa and John--but if I'm running around slapping Czech names on my fantasy protagonists, why shouldn't an author from Chile put English names on hers?

Attempting to decipher unfamiliar vocabulary from context has been rough going so far, as the first paragraph starts by recounting a dream the protagonist had. And it's not encouraging that I had to look up three words in the first sentence alone... But, hey, if it were easy, it wouldn't be instructive.

La Ciudad de las Bestias: Capítulo Uno - Vocabulary

( Interesting words )

Words my dictionary didn't have:

bruces (as in "se cayó de bruces")
tarado (though from context it's clearly an insult)
cornisa (dictionary says "cornice" but that doesn't seem to make sense in context: waves crashing on the cornice in a park?)
pajarraco (a baby bird?)
canturreando ('cantando' would be singing, but this...is something else?)