(upbeat music) Hi, I'm Mason.

And today we're going to be reading The Boy Who Invented the Popsicle.

Written by Anne Renaud and illustrated by Milan Pavlović.

Frank William Epperson knew what he wanted to be when he grew up, and everyone in Frank's family knew, too, because in case they forgot, he reminded them often.

When not busy with his schoolwork or chores, Frank could be found adventuring with his brother Cray, practicing his cornet or learning magic tricks.

He also pondered important questions.

Do ants have ears?

Do goldfish sleep?

Do woodpeckers get headaches from pecking all day?

But Frank's favorite pastime was inventing.

And to invent, Frank knew he had to experiment.

So off he would go to his laboratory, his back porch.

There he doodled and designed, tinkered and tested, analyzed and scrutinized.

By the time Frank was ten years old, he had already masterminded his first invention: a hand car with two handles.

At twice the speed of a regular one- handled hand car, Frank whizzed down the streets of his neighborhood.

Frank also experimented with liquids.

But what Frank loved most was experimenting with flavored soda waters, the kind that hissed and wheezed when he held a glassful to his ear, and sent tangy bubbles galloping across his tongue with every gulp.

Frank had his heart set on inventing the yummiest, most thirst-quenching, lip-smacking soda water ever!

So off Frank would go to the corner store to buy the flavored soda water powders he needed for his experiments, often with his little brother Cray tagging along.

Cray was a handy taster for Frank's concoctions.

Some of his attempts were unsuccessful.

You could even say they were disastrous.

But Frank just kept on trying.

One day, Frank and the other children in his neighborhood decided to build a miniature amusement park.

There was a theater, a merry go round and a scenic railway.

Frank was assigned the soda water stand, which suited him just fine.

He could share his soda water creations with all his friends.

It was also around this time that something peculiar happened.

The temperature dipped and then plunged.

This would not have been unusual had Frank lived in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, or Pocatello, Idaho, where it could be bitterly cold in winter.

But he lived in San Francisco, California, where only rarely did the temperature drop below freezing.

So Frank tried another experiment.

He left a glass of flavored soda water outside overnight.

When he woke the next morning, Frank ran to his back porch to discover his soda water had frozen solid.

He could no longer sip it.

He had to lick it like a lollipop.

Frank had invented a frozen drink on a stick.

As he grew older, Frank's invention did not melt from his memory.

He just tucked it away in a corner of his mind.

And there it stayed while he and his sweetheart, Mary Francis, began raising their own gaggle of children.

But when Frank noticed more and more people eating chocolate covered ice cream bars, off he went to his laboratory, now his garage, to experiment.

Frank found a way to make many of his drinks on a stick at a time.

With test tubes to mold them, wooden sticks to hold them, and a cool way to freeze them.

For Frank's drinks on a stick to freeze, they had to be cold.

Very cold.

Colder than 32 degrees Fahrenheit, the freezing point of water.

Why?

Because their ingredients, like sugar and flavoring, lowered their freezing point.

So what did Frank do?

He built a freezing box that held dozens of test tubes suspended in a mixture of crushed ice and salt.

Frank knew that salt lowered the freezing point of water, and that salty water froze at a much lower temperature than plain tap water.

The salt and ice mixture would be colder than 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

Frank's drinks on a stick also had to freeze quickly.

If they ever froze too slowly, the sugar and flavoring, which were heavier than water, settled at the bottom of the test tubes, leaving just flavorless frozen water at the top.

Frank wanted his treats to have the same tasty flavor throughout.

The salt and crushed ice mixture surrounding the test tubes was so cold, it froze the liquid inside the tubes in minutes.

Frank named his invention the Ep-sicle and began selling i for a nickel at county fairs and beaches.

In the evenings, his children helped him roll the nickels he had earned.

Frank had a clever way to encourage shop owners to sell his frozen treats.

For several weeks in a row, he sent one of his children into a store to buy an Ep-sicle.

Each week, the shop owner had to tell a different child that Ep-sicles were not sold in the store.

Frank would then visit the store himself and ask the shop owner to stock his treats.

Of course, the owner agreed - after having had so many requests!

Frank's children were always keen to sample their father's concoctions.

And with all of them clamoring for their pop's tasty fabrications, in time, the name of Frank's invention changed to the Popsicle.

(upbeat music)