ICE-CREAM CONES FOR SALE!

As irresistible as its subject, Greenstein’s jaunty text and marvelous pictures are also an object lesson in the joys and perils of research. On April 30, 1904, the world’s fair opened in St. Louis, Missouri. We know that people ate ice cream cones there, because there are photographs. But who invented the ice cream cone? Was it Arnold Fournachou, who asked Ernest Hamwi at the waffle stand to make waffles that he could roll and put his ice cream in? Or was it Charles Menches, whose lady friend wrapped the top of her ice cream sandwich around the flowers he gave her, and rolled the bottom into a cone to hold the ice cream? Greenstein merrily shoots down all five candidates, because Italo Marchiony came to New York in 1895 with his grandmother’s recipe for ice cream, and by December 1903—before the fair opened—patented a device to make ten cookie-cone molds at once. The pictures—monoprints overpainted with gouache—are in pastel ice cream colors and sugar cone textures. As delicious as the story. (author’s note, bibliography) (Picture book. 4-8)