Life in the Meadow with Madie: Mr. Earl’s Missing Eyeglasses, by Patty Luhovey | Dedicated Review

Review sponsored* by Patricia Luhovey
The Children’s Book Review | August 1, 2015

Life in the Meadow with Madie: Mr. Earl’s Missing Eyeglasses

Written by Patty Luhovey

Illustrated by Bridget Dowty

Age Range: Emerging readers 4 years and up

Hardcover: 55 pages

Publisher: Self-Published (2015)

What to expect: Religious themes, Moral teaching, Adventure, Humor

Participating in the rich tradition of parables that illustrate moral and religious teachings through animal tales, Life in the Meadow with Madie: Mr. Earl’s Missing Eyeglasses presents the story of a community coming together to help out someone in need. When elderly Mr. Earl the Squirrel takes a fall and hurts himself, losing his glasses in the process, Madie, a young duckling, encourages the community to come together around Mr. Earl in a spirit of helpfulness. Working together proves challenging, and the community learns that doing Good is much more challenging than merely wishing for it. Through it all, the community perseveres, finding the missing eyeglasses (in a surprising place!) and, ultimately, much more than that. By rallying around someone in need, the community comes together in a spirit of charity, building new bonds with one another and making a stronger community in the process. As a helpful bird named Rita recounts, having played her part, “I feel so happy inside to have helped Mr. Earl.”

The tale of recovering the missing glasses, and helping Mr. Earl get around with a cane and limited eyesight, contains various levels of moral teaching, including beautiful messages on the meaning of family and community, the ability to love one another beyond our faults, and—perhaps most fundamentally—that doing good is difficult work. This final message emphasizes the teaching that stepping out into the world to do Good is a necessary component of enacting Faith, one that is more difficult than passively wishing for improvements. Bridget Dowty’s wonderful illustrations serve to underscore the strong character development of the narrative, and also highlight key moments in the text in ways that children will certainly enjoy. The relationship between text and image in fact underscores another one of the great virtues of this very fine book: it will engage a wide range of children. The moral teaching is intelligently presented in a way to encourage discussion and further thought, an enriching process that will lead child and parent alike into continually enriching discussions of family, community, and faith. In every sense of the word, this is a truly insightful book.

Add this book to your collection: Life in the Meadow with Madie: Mr. Earl’s Missing Eyeglasses

About the Author

Patty Luhovey began to write Life in the Meadow with Madie: Mr. Earl’s Missing Eyeglasses by hand in a paper notebook in 2009. The inspiration for Madie was her great niece Madison. Her three great nieces–Madison, Eliza and Delaney–and great nephew Dalton are all characters in the story. A number of the children’s sayings inconspicuously appear in the story as well. Several of the story’s other characters are also based upon family members, even her daughter’s dog Carli. She won’t tell you who Scooter is, though.

She has incorporated spiritual elements as her and her children continued to study the Bible together. Because of this, she believes the story is much stronger and offers parents many teaching opportunities as it fosters discussion around numerous spiritual truths and lessons. She hopes you and your children enjoy it.

For more information, visit: www.madiesmeadow.com

Read our interview with Patty Luhovey.

About the Illustrator

Bridget Dowty is trained in traditional drawing and enthused by the scope of digital techniques, she loves to combine the two. Finals are therefore generally worked up in Corel Painter, Illustrator or Photoshop and delivered electronically. Her broad interests, love of research and sense of story have also instilled a passion for production design and she has worked on award-winning short films which have played at festivals across the world.

For more information, visit: www.bridgetdowty.co.uk

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