Coco Middle Grade Novel

  Papel Picado Art by Jenna Huerta

  Design by Winnie Ho and Susan Gerber

  Copyright © 2017 Disney Enterprises, Inc., and Pixar. All rights reserved. Published by Disney Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney Press, 1101 Flower Street, Glendale, California 91201.

  ISBN 978-1-368-00167-0

  Visit disneybooks.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Rivera Family Tree

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Rivera Family Tree

  About the Author

  Mamá Coco is the only person who truly understands Miguel. That’s why he loves spending time with her.

  “Hola, Mamá Coco,” he says as he steps into his great-grandmother’s room.

  She’s in a wicker wheelchair with her shawl and furry slippers. Her skin is as wrinkled as a wadded paper bag and her face is framed by two white trenzas, braids.

  “How are you, Julio?” she says. Mamá Coco is very old, and sometimes she gets confused.

  “Actually, my name is Miguel.” He leans forward so she can get a good look at him. She lost her teeth long ago, but that doesn’t stop her from smiling. “Heh, heh,” she chuckles as she reaches for his cheeks.

  Miguel tells her everything—how he likes to run with his hands open and palms flat because it’s faster; how he has a dimple on one side of his face but not on the other; who his favorite luchador is. Mamá Coco nods and smiles, while the scraggly cat at the window yawns and stretches.

  When he runs out of things to say, Miguel starts humming absentmindedly as he straightens things around the room. He catches Mamá Coco’s foot moving, but he can’t tell if she’s trying to tap the rhythm or scratching an itch on her heel.

  Without realizing it, Miguel stops humming and starts to sing out loud. He can’t help it. The music just takes over.

  He’s about to hit a high note when his abuelita storms in.

  “How many times do I have to tell you?” she says, pointing at him. “No music!”

  She startles the cat at the window, and it runs off. She startles Mamá Coco and Miguel, too. Noticing this, Abuelita softens a bit and comes over to give Mamá Coco, her mother, a kiss on the forehead.

  “Sorry I yelled,” she says, and turning to Miguel, she adds, “but you know the rule—no music.”

  Miguel does know the rule. He’s reminded every day. Once he blew into a glass soda bottle, and when Abuelita heard the whistle, she snatched the bottle away. Another time Miguel rushed to the window when he heard a truck with its radio blaring, but before he could catch the tune, Abuelita angrily slammed the window shut. A few nights before, a trio of gentlemen had serenaded as they strolled by the family hacienda, and instead of letting them fill the air with beautiful songs, Abuelita burst out the door and chased them off. “No music!” she’d shouted after them.

  And here she is again, telling him about the ban on music.

  “I know the rule,” Miguel says, “but—”

  Abuelita shushes him. Then she sits on the edge of Mamá Coco’s bed and pats the space beside her so Miguel can sit, too.

  “Let me tell you why we have this rule,” she begins. Miguel sighs. He’s heard the story a million times. He can recite it by memory, and he says the words in his mind as Abuelita speaks. “A long time ago, there was a family. A mamá, a papá, and their little girl. The man, he was a musician. He loved to play the guitar while his wife and daughter danced. Every day, he and his wife would sing, dance, and count their blessings.” Abuelita pauses and takes a deep breath before going on. “But this man had a dream. He wanted to play his music for the world. And one day, that man left with his guitar…and never returned.” She shakes her head with shame, and her voice hardens a bit. “Now imagine a man holding a guitar and walking away as his poor wife and child stand in the doorway and watch. But do you think that woman wasted one tear on that walk-away musician? Tch—¡Claro que no!”

  Miguel decides to finish the story. “She banished all music from her life because she had a daughter to provide for,” he says, and Abuelita nods. “So she rolled up her sleeves and she learned to make shoes. Then she taught her daughter to make shoes. And later, she taught her son-in-law. Then her grandkids got roped in. As the business grew, so did her family.”

  Abuelita puts a hand on Miguel’s shoulder. “And who was that woman?”

  “My great-great-grandmother, Mamá Imelda.”

  “And the little girl?”

  “Mamá Coco,” Miguel answers, glancing at his great-grandmother as she sits in the wheelchair, nearly asleep.

  Abuelita gets up and adjusts the shawl on Mamá Coco’s shoulders. She beckons Miguel to follow her, and they tiptoe out, making their way to the ofrenda room. It’s set up as a memorial to their ancestors, with an altar decorated with embroidered cloth, flowers, and candles illuminating portraits of relatives who have passed away. In the flickering light, the portraits seem to move as if the ancestors were still alive. Abuelita lovingly adjusts a sepia-tinted photo of Mamá Imelda with baby Coco on her lap. A man stands beside her, but his face has been torn away. The only clue that this is the mysterious musician is a charro jacket with fancy trim, the kind that mariachis love to wear.

  “Come along,” Abuelita says, and she leads Miguel across the courtyard to the shoemaking shop. Cabinets along the walls hold trays of buckles, shoelaces, brackets, threads, and chisels. Half-finished shoes hang from clotheslines, and different-sized mallets are thrown about. The floor is scuffed from so many years of the Rivera family hard at work. Even now, they are busy making shoes. Miguel’s papá and tía Gloria use rivet guns to make eyelets for shoelaces. His mother and grandfather run fabric through sewing machines. Tío Berto carves into leather with a swivel knife, and Tía Carmen traces patterns on a cutting board. It’s very noisy in the shop, but the tapping, punching, and sewing sound nothing like music to Miguel.

  Abuelita waves her hand across the room as if showing Miguel a grand kingdom. “Music tore our family apart, but shoes have held it together.” Then she giggles to herself. “In fact,” she says, “I captured the heart of your grandfather when he realized that I made the most beautiful and comfortable cowboy boots in all of Mexico.”

  “I never got blisters,” Papá Franco says.

  “No one gets blisters when they wear my shoes,” Abuelita proudly announces.

  “Okay, okay,” Miguel says. “Shoes. I get it.” He slips a red hoodie over his tank top, grabs a shoeshine box, and heads for the door. “Why don’t I make myself useful and go shine some boots in town?”

  “Be back by lunch, m’ijo,” his mamá says
.

  “And don’t forget to use the brush on suede and the cloth on leather,” Abuelita reminds him.

  “Got it!” Miguel says, rushing to shine shoes like a proper Rivera boy. But, and this is the part he’s left out, he plans to shine shoes near the musicians in Mariachi Plaza!

  On his way to the plaza, Miguel says hello to a woman who is whistling as she sweeps her stoop. Then he passes a lone guitarist playing a classical piece with lots of tremolo. Miguel nods with appreciation, and the man nods back. The closer Miguel gets to the plaza, the more music he hears and the happier he feels. Young girls sing while jumping rope, the slap on the sidewalk setting the tempo for their song. The church bells chime in harmony with a tune played by a street band, and when a radio blares a cumbia rhythm, Miguel does a few crossover steps to the beat.

  He’s humming when he reaches a pan dulce booth and grabs his favorite type of sweet bread, the cochinito, a gingerbread cookie shaped like a pig.

  “Muchas gracias!” Miguel says as he tosses the vendor a coin.

  “De nada, Miguel!”

  As he walks along, he feels something at his leg, and when he looks down, he sees the scraggly cat from Mamá Coco’s window. It scurries off, then glances back to see if Miguel is following. Where does that cat want me to go? he wonders.

  He shrugs and moves on to a street vendor at a booth full of alebrijes, colorful sculptures of fantastical creatures, like lizards with feathers, rabbits with horns, and giraffes with multicolored spots. Miguel stops a moment, tapping a rhythm on the table. He’s about to take a bite of pan dulce when a familiar street dog sidles up. The dog is nearly bald, with a few hairs sticking out here and there like thorns on a nopal. He goofily licks his chops because he’s hungry.

  Miguel breaks off the rump of the cochinito and holds it over the dog’s nose. “Want some of this?” he asks, laughing.

  “Roo, roo!” the dog answers.

  Miguel goes through the commands he has taught the dog. “Sit, roll over, shake.” The dog performs each trick perfectly. Miguel finishes with his favorite, “Fist bump,” and he laughs as the the dog laps his long tongue against his closed hand. “Good boy, Dante!”

  Miguel drops the pan dulce, and Dante gobbles it up.

  There’s a sense of celebration in the air because it’s the eve of Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, when the community honors loved ones who have passed away. The streets are lined with strings of papel picado, squares of paper with punched-out designs, brightening the space with their pinks, greens, golds, and blues. Children reach for decorated sugar skulls. Some of the elderly, viejitos and viejitas, carry candles and vases filled with marigolds and mums for their ofrendas, while others rush to buy soda, candy, fruit, cigars, or toys to leave at the gravesites.

  Meanwhile, Miguel quickly makes his way to Mariachi Plaza with Dante at his side. They finally reach their destination, and the plaza lives up to its name, for it is crowded with musicians. They’re so lucky, thinks Miguel, to play guitars and trumpets without getting scolded.

  “I know I’m not supposed to like music,” Miguel tells Dante, “but it’s not my fault!” Miguel looks up and gazes at a statue of a handsome mariachi. “It’s his: Ernesto de la Cruz, the greatest musician of all time.” At the base of the statue is a plaque with the musician’s most famous quote—SEIZE YOUR MOMENT.

  Just then a tour group makes its way to the statue, and Miguel eavesdrops as the tour guide tells them about the famous musician.

  “And right here in this very plaza,” the tour guide says, “the young Ernesto de la Cruz took his first steps toward becoming the most beloved singer in Mexican history.”

  As the guide speaks, Miguel imagines de la Cruz in his heyday, a young man in the plaza, swarmed by fans as he played his songs.

  He glances down at Dante and pets him. “De la Cruz,” Miguel says, “he was just…he was the guy, you know? He started out a total nobody from Santa Cecilia, like me. But when he played music, he made people fall in love with him.” Dante wags his tail. Miguel’s told this story a dozen times, and Dante always seems happy to hear it. “He traveled the world,” Miguel goes on. “He starred in movies. Oh, plus he had the coolest guitar. And he wrote the best songs! But my all-time favorite? It’s—”

  Miguel closes his eyes and recalls an old clip of de la Cruz performing in a fancy nightclub. He can clearly hear de la Cruz’s voice singing his most famous song, “Remember Me.” It’s a song about being remembered forever—even after one is gone. And it has a very catchy tune.

  Miguel hums along with the memory. Then he looks up at the statue of Ernesto de la Cruz, awestruck by his greatness.

  “He lived the kind of life you dream about,” he continues, “until 1942…” He can’t finish the sentence, because it breaks his heart to repeat what happened, but then he hears Dante panting and sees the goofy dog waiting for the end of the story. “Until 1942, when he was crushed by a giant bell.”

  Dante barks as if to say “the end.” Then he runs off, and Miguel remembers why he’s in the plaza. He’s supposed to shine shoes, so he finds a spot near the statue and takes out his shoeshine kit, using the box as a footstool for his customers. A few minutes later, a mariachi asks for a shoeshine and Miguel gets to work, the whole time repeating the tale of Ernesto de la Cruz. “Sometimes, I look at de la Cruz,” he says, “and I get this feeling…like we’re connected somehow. Like, if he could play music, maybe someday I could, too.” Then, in a voice full of sadness, he continues, “If only it wasn’t for my family.”

  “Ay yai yai, muchacho!” the mariachi exclaims.

  “Huh?” Miguel says, confused, because for a moment, he’s forgotten where he is.

  “I asked for a shoeshine, not your life story,” the mariachi says.

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

  Miguel goes back to buffing the man’s shoe. Meanwhile, the mariachi plucks at his guitar strings.

  “I just can’t talk about any of this at home,” Miguel explains.

  “Look,” the mariachi says, “if I were you? I’d march right up to my family and say, ‘Hey! I’m a musician. Deal with it.’”

  Miguel shakes his head. “I could never say that.”

  “You are a musician, no?”

  Miguel desperately wants to say yes, but then he remembers his family’s past, how music tore them apart.

  “I don’t know,” he admits. “I mean…I only really play for myself—”

  “Aah!” The mariachi seems frustrated by Miguel’s lack of confidence. “Did de la Cruz become the world’s best musician by hiding his sweet, sweet skills?” He doesn’t let Miguel answer. “No!” the mariachi says, thumping his guitar for emphasis. “He walked out onto that plaza and he played out loud!” He points to the gazebo, where some men are setting up speakers and hanging a giant poster announcing a talent show. “Ah! ¡Mira, mira! They’re setting up for tonight. The music competition for Día de los Muertos. You wanna be like your hero? You should sign up!”

  Instead of excited, Miguel is shocked at the thought. “Huh-uh, my family would freak!”

  “Look, if you’re too scared, then, well…have fun making shoes.” The mariachi does a quick rasgueado on the guitar, and Miguel admires the way his fingers flutter over the strings. “But the world belongs to the bold, m’ijo.” Miguel silently mouths the words as he considers this. “C’mon,” the mariachi urges. “What did de la Cruz always say?”

  “Seize your moment?” Miguel phrases it as a question even though he knows the answer by heart.

  The mariachi nods. Then he offers the guitar to Miguel. “Show me what you got, muchacho. I’ll be your first audience.”

  Miguel’s eyes widen and his brows rise with surprise at this gesture. He aches to hold the guitar, but then he hears Abuelita proclaiming the family rule—No music allowed! Every time he dares to play something, her warning echoes in his head. But how can he resist a chance to touch a beautiful guitar?

  He glances around to make s
ure the coast is clear. Then he reaches for the instrument and takes it with reverence, as if holding a holy relic. Once it’s in his arms, Miguel presses the strings and is about to strum a C chord when he hears: “Miguel!”

  It’s Abuelita’s voice, and he laughs at himself. I must be paranoid, he thinks. But then he hears her voice again, this time much closer. He gasps and tosses the guitar back to the mariachi, but it’s too late. Abuelita, Tío Berto, and Prima Rosa, Miguel’s cousin, have found them. They march straight over, their arms full of bags and supplies.

  “Abuelita!” Miguel says.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks.

  “Um…uh…” Miguel quickly packs up his shoeshine equipment, hoping his grandmother ignores the mariachi.

  But she doesn’t. She grabs a chancla from her purse. Many years ago, the strap on the sandal fell off, but since Abuelita hates to throw out shoes, no matter how tattered, she keeps it as a flyswatter. Apparently, it’s a mariachi swatter, too, because she barrels up to the man, hits him with the shoe, and waves him away just like she does with the flies.

  “You leave my grandson alone!” she shouts.

  “Doña, please. I was just getting a shine!”

  “I know your tricks, mariachi!” Then, turning to Miguel, she demands, “What did he say to you?”

  Miguel shrugs. “He was just showing me his guitar.”

  Abuelita gasps, Prima Rosa gasps, and Tío Berto gasps, too. “Shame on you!” the uncle says to the mariachi.

  Abuelita approaches the musician, chancla aimed directly between his eyes. “My grandson,” she says, “is a sweet little angelito querido cielito. He wants no part of your music, mariachi! You keep away from him!”

  She is a formidable woman, so the mariachi grabs his sombrero and scrambles away. Miguel can only watch with unspoken apologies and a heavy heart. There goes a man who let him talk about music without feeling ashamed.

  “¡Ay, pobrecito!” Abuelita says, hugging Miguel so tight he can barely breathe. “¿Estás bien, m’ijo?” When she releases him, he gasps for air. “You know better than to be in this place! You will come home. Now.”