A Squash and a Squeeze by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler
Theme: be happy with what you’ve got, or the patriarchy (here embodied by a bloke with a beard*) will make it worse.
Agents of the patriarchy: A hen, a goat, a pig and a cow, who come into the house, smash up the old woman’s posessions, and eat all her food. All (apart from the pig) evidently female. Collaborators!
Internalised oppression: the old woman keeps asking the beardy man for help. Will she never learn?
But seriously: she’s an elderly subsistence farmer living in a single room. I appreciate telling kids to be grateful for what they’ve got, but she really hasn’t got much.
* Suspicously like traditional representations of the Judeo-Christian God. Coincidence?
