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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Text and art copyright © 2022 by Raj Haldar

  Cover and internal design © 2022 by Sourcebooks

  Cover design by Maryn Arreguín/Sourcebooks

  Internal design by Jillian Rahn/Sourcebooks

  Cover and internal illustrations by Neha Rawat

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks eXplore, an imprint of Sourcebooks Kids

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567–4410

  (630) 961-3900

  sourcebookskids.com

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  1. Costume Confidential

  2. The Halloween Party

  3. The Great Candy Trade

  4. The Big Sweet

  5. San Miguel

  6. No Ordinary Post Office

  7. The Mailroom

  8. The Bluest Blue House

  9. Finding Frida

  10. Captain of the Canal

  11. The Island of the Dolls

  12. The Cloud Forest

  13. Puzzle of the Pyramid

  14. The Land of Seven Molés

  15. Día de los Muertos

  16. All Souls’ Day

  Glossary of Word Origins

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  Dedication

  Back Cover

  Have you ever wondered where the words we use every day come from? In the Word Travelers series, discover the fascinating origins of the words in bold using the glossary at the end of this book.

  1

  Costume Confidential

  “Boo!” MJ’s mom peeked into her bedroom wearing a pointy black hat, “Do you need help with your costume, Molly-Jean?”

  Digging through an old trunk, MJ finally found her beat-up leather bomber jacket. “Now where are those aviator pins that Eddie got me for my birthday last year?”

  MJ’s mom let out a sigh as she turned around to head back downstairs. “Let me guess, you’re dressing up as Amelia Earhart…again.”

  MJ smiled to herself. Ever since she read a biography of the great Amelia Earhart, MJ had been positively obsessed. Amelia was one of her all-time heroes, and every Halloween meant dressing up as the famous woman pilot.

  “Eddie and his parents are going to be here any minute now!” MJ’s mom called out from the bottom of the stairs.

  Just then, the doorbell rang. Before her mom could shout at her again, MJ yelled down, “I’m coming! Just a sec!”

  After MJ completed her costume, she bounded down the stairs. She could hear her best friend, Eddie, doing a funny impression. “Look-see, I’m a gumshoe, but that doesn’t mean there’s gum on my shoes!” he joked, talking from the side of his mouth. He was dressed in a long brown trench coat, probably from his dad’s closet. On his head, Eddie wore a fedora hat with a wide brim. In his left hand, MJ spied a magnifying glass.

  “You’re a detective!” MJ guessed as she reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “You got it, Mac!” Eddie responded, staying totally in character. “Now, let’s quit the horsing around and get this Halloween party started.”

  2

  The Halloween Party

  Eddie and MJ’s families loved their little traditions, and Halloween was no exception. Each year, MJ’s mom and dad invited Eddie’s parents over for a Halloween party. Everyone got into the spirit. MJ’s mom set up a jack-o-lantern carving station in the kitchen. And they always ordered pizza for dinner.

  Eddie’s dad was already goofing around doing the “Monster Mash” dance, making everyone laugh. “Happy All Hallows’ Eve, everyone!” bellowed Eddie’s dad as he plopped down on the sofa, out of breath from his kooky dance.

  “You mean Halloween?” asked MJ.

  “Oh no, little buddy,” he replied, shaking his head. “Halloween is a shortened way of saying All Hallows’ Eve. That’s what they called it way back in the Middle Ages in Scotland, where the tradition started.”

  MJ sounded it out. “All Hallows’ Eve. Hall—ow—e’en. Whoa!”

  After carving their pumpkins, the friends ate dinner. MJ felt like she had finished her one-and-a-half slices of pizza hours ago. Now, she was getting impatient with Eddie, who was taking forever to eat as usual. “Since when did you start eating your pizza backward, Eddie?” she asked, rolling her eyes.

  “I like to get the crust out of the way first so I can enjoy all this cheesy goodness!” Eddie replied as he pulled the slice away, stretching a string of cheese the length of his arm with it. MJ laughed. With one gigantic bite, Eddie finished the last of his dinner and looked up from his plate. “C’mon, let’s go! It’s time to…”

  “Treat or trick!” they shouted together.

  Two years ago, MJ and Eddie had decided to switch the order of the words when MJ learned that “trick” in trick-or-treat meant a prank that children played on grown-ups who didn’t hand out candy. “No one does the trick part anymore, so why should it go first?” she always said.

  “It’s getting dark out there. You kids better get moving!” said MJ’s mom as she opened the front door. With that, they fixed up their costumes and dashed out into the crisp fall night.

  There were exactly thirteen houses on Magnolia Street, where Eddie and MJ lived.

  The two costumed friends made their way up the street, stopping at every single house. By the time they reached the end of the street, the bags they used to collect their treats were almost full. There was only one house left. All the way at the top of Magnolia Street was number thirteen, the oldest house on the block.

  “We can just skip number thirteen,” Eddie said nervously. “We’ve already got lots of candy…”

  Every Halloween, the rumors would spread. The neighborhood kids whispered that the elderly lady, Mrs. Calavera, who lived with her daughter at the old house at the end of the street would cast a spell on you if you went trick-or-treating there.

  Suddenly, a bolt of lightning lit up the night sky. The wind picked up, clattering the shutters of the old house. It started to rain, and Eddie felt more than ever that 13 Magnolia Street was something straight out of a haunted house movie.

  “Thirteen is an unlucky number—” Eddie started.

  “Don’t tell me you have triskaidekaphobia, Eddie!” said MJ, shaking her head.

  “I feel just fine, thank you,” replied Eddie, touching the back of his hand to his forehead.

  “No, silly! It’s a big word for when people are scared of the number thirteen. But, in some countries, thirteen is actually a lucky number!” MJ said. “Now, let’s go.”

  MJ tugged her friend by his trench coat, and the two made their way toward the rickety front door.

  “I…I don’t think anyone’s home, MJ,” Eddie whispered, as he stepped backward away from the old house.

  “Not so fast,” said MJ. She reached up on her tippy-toes and pressed the doorbell.

  Ding-dong!

  Slowly, the front door creaked open. Eddie could barely make out the shadow of a woman towering above them. At her feet, a black cat scurried out into the yard.

  “Gato!” the lady screeched. Stepping into the light, Eddie and MJ finally got a good look at the woman. It was Mrs. Calavera’s grown-up daughter, Elena.

  “Hola, kids,” she said, looking down at Eddie and MJ.

  “Treat or trick, Ms. Elena!” MJ said excitedly. She knew better than to believe all those silly rumors about the Calaveras.

  Ms. Elena looked down with a great big smile. “I almost forgot it was Halloween since all the other kids have stopped coming to our house.”

  “Where’s your mom, Mrs. Calavera?” asked MJ.

  “Dios mío! You didn’t hear?” replied Ms. Elena with a frown. “My mother passed away just a few months ago.” Ms. Elena’s eyes got watery, and a teardrop rolled down her cheek.

  “I’m so sorry,” MJ said.

  “Thank you, but it’s okay. She was one hundred five years old and had a long, wonderful life,” Ms. Elena said. She smiled at the trick-or-treaters just as the rain let up, and the clouds gave way to a glowing full moon. “Actually, it makes me very happy that you came here, because my mother loved to hand out candy on Halloween,” she remembered. “Let me see. I know Mother always kept some goodies in the drawer right here.” Ms. Elena turned around, rooting through an old cabinet in the front room of the house. “Aha! Here we are,” she said, dropping a treat into MJ’s bag. Ms. Elena looked down and winked at Eddie and MJ. “Mother must have known you’d be coming, because she left a big candy for you to share. Happy Halloween!”

  3

  The Great Candy Trade

  Halloween always ended the same way for Eddie and MJ. They’d sit on the living room carpet in front of their own pile of treats. First, the two friends would organize their candy by type: all the lollipops would go together, the gummy worms would get grouped up, and so on. Once they were done arranging everything, the Great Candy Trade would begin!

  “I’ll give you three packs of candy corn for that big box of watermelon bubble gum,” MJ said.

  “Sold!” Eddie replied.

  Just as they were finishing their last trade, Eddie noticed something colorful laying on the carpet a few feet away. “That wasn’t there before, was it?”

  MJ knelt and got a closer look. “It’s the candy bar Ms. Elena gave us from her mother, Mrs. Calavera. It must’ve tumbled away when we dumped our treats onto the floor.”

  “That doesn’t look like any of the usual candy bars,” Eddie said as he walked over to MJ. The wrapper had a striking pattern of colorful blue, orange, and yellow triangles. MJ carefully opened the outer wrapper, revealing a golden foil inside.

  “This is the most beautiful candy bar I’ve ever seen!” said MJ.

  Not able to wait any longer, Eddie grabbed the curious candy from MJ and started unwrapping the golden foil. Inside was a chocolate bar with something strange pressed onto it: CHOCOLATL.

  “What the heck?” said Eddie. “This must be some kind of mistake. Chocolate ends with an E, not an L.”

  “I don’t know, Eddie,” MJ said, turning the candy over in her hands. “Who would make such a gorgeous candy bar and then forgot how to spell chocolate? There must be something more to it.”

  The two kids looked at each other with a knowing glance. “We need the AEB!”

  The Awesome Enchanted Book—or AEB as they called it for short—was a special kind of dictionary that explained where all the words in the English language come from. Not only that, the AEB also had magical powers!

  In a flash, Eddie and MJ raced across the living room past their parents and up the stairs to MJ’s bedroom. MJ reached under her bed, where they had stored it for safekeeping, and pulled out the big old book.

  “Let’s start with the letter C. For chocolate!” Eddie exclaimed.

  The AEB was organized just like an ordinary dictionary, with all the words in alphabetical order. They found the section for words that start with the letter C.

  “Chocolate sounds like it’s French or something,” MJ said to herself as she ran her fingers across the pages. “If we can just find it here. Champion…chimpanzee…”

  “There!” shouted Eddie, pointing to the opposite page.

  MJ read the entry from the AEB aloud. “From a word used by the ancient Aztecs, chocolatl…”

  “It ends in an L! Like it says on the candy bar!” Eddie interrupted.

  “It was originally prepared as a drink; in the Nahuatl language used by the Aztecs, the word at-l means hot water,” MJ continued.

  “The ancient Aztecs drank hot chocolate just like us,” Eddie whispered. “Where in the world did the Aztecs live again?” he wondered. “I know we learned about this in school, but I can’t remember…”

  At that very moment, the AEB began floating above their heads, spinning faster and faster, until the room was filled with a swirling haze of smoke, and—poof!

  4

  The Big Sweet

  “Eddie!” MJ called out. A noisy ceiling fan above helped clear away the smoke that filled the room. She could see her best friend sitting nearby on an old wooden desk. “Where in the world are we?” she gasped.

  Eddie kicked his feet up on the desk. “I couldn’t tell ya, Mac,” he replied, noticing that he still had his private eye costume on. Looking around, Eddie saw a shabby office with some beat-up filing cabinets in the corner. “But it does suit me pretty good.”

  At the far end of the room, they saw a large door with a frosted glass window. “Look!” MJ said. “There’s something written on the door.”

  “I don’t know, MJ,” shrugged Eddie. “Looks like a bunch of gobbledygook to me.”

  MJ studied the symbols on the window, scratching her head. Suddenly, it came to her. “How could we be so foolish? The letters are written backward because the sign is meant to be read from the outside.”

  “You’re right!” Eddie exclaimed, already starting to work out the words. “Oficina de…”

  MJ interrupted. “That means office in Spanish! I remember it from a sign in my doctor’s waiting room back home!”

  Eddie’s eyes got wide as it dawned on him. “We’re in a detective’s office!” he shouted.

  “But it’s in Spanish. Does that mean we’re in Spain?” MJ added quizzically.

  Just then, Eddie and MJ heard the sound of music wafting in through a window in the corner of the room. Running over to get a better look, MJ saw a group of men on the street below playing trumpets, violins, and guitars. “Wowza!” exclaimed MJ.

  “Holy guacamole!” Eddie blurted out. “They look like musicians from when we learned about Cinco de Mayo at school! Don’t you remember our celebration?”

  “That’s right,” said MJ. “On the the fifth of May every year, we celebrate the food, music, and all of the other awesome stuff we get from…”

  “The country that has the most Spanish-speaking people in the whole world,” added Eddie, tipping his detective hat and smiling.

  “We’re in Mexico!” they said at exactly the same time.

  Suddenly, the door swung open. A girl who was just a few years older than Eddie and MJ burst into the office. She had a worried look on her face. “My family needs your help, Señor Detective,” she said.

  “Slow down! You’ve got it all wrong,” said Eddie. “I’m not actually a detective. I just happen to be inside a detective’s office, wearing a detective’s outfit…” Eddie trailed off, realizing how ridiculous he sounded.

  “This is no time to be humble, señor!” pleaded the girl.

  The two friends looked at each other and decided right there and then to take the case.

  “Eddie and Molly-Jean Detective Agency, at your service, ma’am,” Eddie said, with the drawl of one of those movie investigators.

  “Oh, gracias!” the girl said, letting out a sigh of relief. “My name is Rosa. I came here because my family’s restaurant is in big trouble.”

  “What happened?” MJ asked.

  “You see, each year thousands of people come from all around to our little town of San Miguel to celebrate Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead.”

  “Sounds spooky!” said Eddie.

  MJ shook her head and sighed. “Don’t you remember, Eddie? Día de los Muertos is the holiday that people celebrate here in Mexico at the beginning of November.”

  “Yes,” Rosa continued. “It takes place around the same time as Halloween, but we have our own customs and traditions. Día de los Muertos is a joyful holiday where we celebrate the memory of our ancestors who have died by telling funny stories about them and enjoying their favorite foods. On the final night of celebrations, everyone goes to the big graveyard here in San Miguel for a gigantic party with music and tasty treats for all. And that’s the problem…”

  “Give us the scoop, Rosa,” Eddie said.

  “Well, my family restaurant is famous for making a special dish called molé,” explained Rosa. “The trouble is, Abuelita, my grandmother, is the only one who knows the secret recipe, and she’s gone missing!”

 

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