THE GAGGLE SISTERS SING AGAIN

This second go-round for Jackson’s Gaggle Sisters, in a proposed trilogy, is curiously disjointed, but maintains the rhythm of their musical river tour. Sadie, the vain goose diva, continues her feckless, demanding ways—buying a Carmen Miranda–style hat with the sisters’ scant funds, refusing to share the stage with a frog who also happens to be a virtuoso dancer—while Dorothy, the caustic factotum goose, endures Sadie’s self-serving blather and cleverly works behind the scenes to find solutions to Sadie’s egotistical troublemaking. The hat and the frog don’t share anything in common other than to point up Sadie’s mischief, and young readers will wonder just what happened after Dorothy whispered a sweet something into the singing bivalve, but these are also the kind of discontinuities that will fire up their melons with deep thoughts. The watercolors, on the other hand, soothe as they transport readers to the Wriggle River. (Picture book. 4-7)