1KHO 543: Our World's Beauty is Preposterous | Amanda Dykes, A Pocketful of Wonder

The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast

Ginny Yurich

Parenting, Kids & Family

4.9 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 7 August 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bestselling novelist Amanda Dykes joins The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast for a conversation that will stir your heart, lift your eyes, and invite you to marvel again at the wonder that surrounds us. In this episode, Amanda shares the tender backstory behind her career shift from English teacher to award-winning author, and how deep grief gave way to deep creativity. We explore the making of her stunning new book A Pocketful of Wonder, a field guide for children to experience God’s creation through poem, prayer, play, and music. Along the way, Amanda and Ginny talk about the courage to pursue creativity, the mysterious work of God in delays and detours, and why beauty is not frivolous—it’s essential. Amanda’s words are a balm, reminding us that wonder is a battle cry in a heavy world, and that attention is one of the greatest gifts we can give our children. You’ll hear about concrete poems, whimsical squirrel illustrations, nature’s instruments, and how a single drop of rain in the desert can unleash the aroma of hope. This conversation will inspire you to step into the preposterous beauty all around—and bring your kids with you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Urch and the founder of 1000 Hours Outside.
0:05.9	And I have a wonderful author, a very eclectic author writing novels, plus this amazing new book that just came out called A Pocket Full of Wonder.
0:15.2	Came out earlier this year, 50 hands-on adventures for kids to discover God's creation.
0:20.3	It's like this adorable little family
0:22.1	field guide. Amanda Dykes, the author is here. Welcome, Amanda. Thank you so much for having me.
0:27.4	It's such a joy to be here. So I would love to kick it off with you do this thing that so many people
0:32.6	talk about doing but don't ever actually do. So you're an English teacher, a former English teacher,
0:38.8	and you became an author and an author of a lot of books. I actually have one of your books that won an
0:43.3	incredible award called the Christy Award in 2020, the Christy Award Book of the Year. It's called
0:49.3	Who, this is the one that won, right? Uh-huh. That's the one. Yes. Whose waves these are?
0:54.7	But this is just one of many novels.
0:56.5	I would love you to just, I'm sure you've done it a bunch, but could you walk us through the story of obviously you're interested in books and reading and writing enough to become an English teacher? And then at some point, you've stepped away from that. Yeah. So I imagine that a lot of the listeners here share this too, just sort of an
1:13.9	enchantment with language. It is its own art medium. It can be playful. It can be captivating. It
1:20.2	can be poetic. It could be punchy, all these things. And so that love of language and story,
1:27.1	as well as a love for kids and teenagers led me into a career in teaching, which is really funny because it was kind of the one thing I thought I would not do teaching.
1:37.6	I didn't have anything against it, but I thought I would, my dream was to maybe own or work at or run a summer camp someday for teenagers.
1:45.6	I just had this heart for teens.
1:47.9	And several people along the way in my own teenagerhood kind of pulled me aside or
1:54.2	mentioned in conversations, hey, have you ever thought about being a teacher?
1:57.6	And of course, my response was not really, not really.
2:01.1	And their point was, you know, this dream of having a camp, the driving force behind it is
2:08.4	the hearts, you know, ministering to the hearts and meeting them at this, this time in their
	...

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