Cold Comfort
By KATHLEEN KRULL


Jules Older's ''Ice Cream'' is as different-looking as can be -- bold, brassy, cartoony, wisecracky in a manner that will appeal to its older age group, 7 and up. If its look is familiar, that's because the artist, Lyn Severance, also designed the Ben & Jerry's cartons.

The information here is also completely different. There is nary a cow in sight. Instead we start with ice and ''guys with big arms'' who once chopped ice in the wintertime. If you really want to know, you can study a double-page spread that goes into great detail about the workings of an ice cream freezer. But most readers will surf right into ''Great Moments in Ice Cream History.''

Here the author views ice cream through the lens of geography and world history. He scoops up some tasty stuff -- including Thomas Jefferson's vanilla ice cream recipe (who knew that a founding father might have introduced flavored ice cream to the colonies?).


We find out one traditional explanation for why ''sundae'' is spelled like that (it has to do with religious people not wanting to mix something so sinful with Sunday).

We applaud whoever decided that new immigrants on Ellis Island should be able to top off their first American meal with ice cream. Older reveals the location of the world's biggest ice cream factory (Bakersfield, Calif.), and tells us the state that slurps the most (Utah), as well as stories of people who invented the cone and all other sublime incarnations of ice cream.

He even reveals the worst flavors ever concocted: lox and bagel, chili, kumquat, to name a few. In Bar Harbor, Me., you can eat chunks of fresh lobster in your ice cream -- if you dare.

The layout occasionally confuses, but once again the topic seduces, and readers will be highly motivated to forge on. The heavy black line and the bright, flat colors of a comic book unify the frothy facts, and a time line helps us keep it all straight. The cherry on top is a list of ice-cream-related books and Web sites.