Tag: coco

upperstories:

Things I learned from the ingenious and somehow more heart wrenching Junior Novelization of Pixar’s Coco!

-Hector is truly infamous in the Land of the Dead’s Grand Central Station. The woman who stops him at the gate not only knows him by name but remembers Hector’s previous attempts to cross the marigold bridge, and has seen through all of his hair-brained schemes. She even warns him, “You know the drill…” before calling security. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the security guards placed a bet around Dia de los Muertos, All of the guards and receptionists and greeters trying to guess what Hector’s plan will be, when he’ll try to crossover, how long it takes before anyone hails him in, etc.

-Hector actually has 2 dimples, and not just one like I’d previously imagined! Though in his photo in the film, it looks like one is deeper than the other, favoring the same side as Miguel’s single dimple. But the book explicitly says he has 2.

-Shantytown and the poor souls who live in it are a treasure and Deserved Better (I wish some of their dialogue had made it into the final movie). When the deceased Riveras are tracking Miguel, they passed through shantytown and the place where Tia Chelo and her friends were playing poker, only to find that their game table is abandoned, along with other sad scenes of other souls fading away. Those poor dears… (The Land of the Dead should SERIOUSLY consider opening some kind of a Retirement home for the nearly forgotten!)

-Before going on stage and singing Poco Loco, Hector tells Miguel that the secret of the perfect performance is to sing with the people you care about in mind, like your singing to them and only them with all your heart. Hector implies that he does this whenever he sings, thinking of “someone still in the Lamd of the Living”. When Miguel finally gathers up the courage to sing, he thinks of singing to Mama Coco, the only Rivera who ever loved music as much as Miguel. Although we don’t know it at the time, in that moment, Hector and Miguel both think of the same person when they wish to Sing For The Person They Love Most. (And yes, I had to take five minutes to cry before continuing)

-Miguel once wrote a song for Ernesto de la Cruz and spent all of his allowance on a mug as offerings to his hero. Upon discovering the piles of gifts Ernesto has received from the Many ofrendas raised in his honor, he realizes Ernesto has probably never even see his offerings.

-During Hector’s flashback, he recounts how during his travels with Ernesto, he’d wake up in so many hotel rooms, all of them so alike and repetitive that he often forgot what town he was in and would feel very disorientated from homesickness. Pobrecito…

-Mama Coco never stopped thinking about her Papa, in spite of years of living under her mother’s scorn of him and music. She even pretended to dance to music that Hector used to play to her, and sang to baby Miguel! (Possibly sparking the child’s love of music) I wonder if the song she hummed to him was Remember Me… 💛💜💀 I Hope So

-It’s implied in the book that Mama Coco passed away “a few months” before Dia de los Muertos, possibly implying she died some time in July or August. Assuming that Miguel’s mother looks about 5 or 6 months pregnant earlier in the film, this could mean that the baby was born in February or March, implying that Mama Coco got to meet her baby granddaughter! At least, I hope so anyway.

-Upon finally being allowed to cross the bridge, Hector sings as he walks (in a brand new pair of Rivera shoes, blister free! Thanks to Imelda), Coco dances to his singing, and Imelda harmonizes with Hector. They can finally sing, dance, and count their blessings together, for the first time in nearly a century.

-When Miguel learns that crawlspace he used as his musical haven in the attic was the same space that Mama Coco used to dance, he finds an old pair of dance shoes she used to wear and polishes them all sparkling and new. He brings it to Mama Coco’s grave as an offering, so that she may dance to her heart’s content in the afterlife.

-Hector, in spite of being much more put together than the previous year, still carries some cheeky skeletal habits. Unseen to Miguel, he uses his own skull as a drum, and his ribs as a washboard to add more rhythm to chamaco’s music.

So yeah. This book killed me in the best possible way. 💜💛💜💛💜💛💜💛

ALSO!!!! THERES AN AUDIOBOOK FOR IT TOO, DUBBED BY THE AUTHOR!!!! AND ITS SO GOOD YOU GUYS ITS SO GOOD