Book awards and Sycamore Gap’s new shoots

The Week Junior Show

The Week Junior team celebrates the recent Book Awards, highlighting winners like Jack Mackay and AJ Woods, before shifting to environmental

Key takeaways

• Jack Mackay's spooky story Gloam won two trophies at the Week Junior Book Awards for audiobook and breakthrough categories.
• The National Trust reports that new shoots are sprouting from the stump of the Sycamore Gap tree, signaling ecological recovery after it was cut down in 2023.

Main topics

• Week Junior Book Awards
• Sycamore Gap tree recovery

Notable quotes

"Gloam is such a good story, but very, very spooky."

Conclusion

Listeners gain inspiration from children's literature awards and creat

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Let your little one's imagination run wild with Build-A-Bear at McDonald's. Because whilst you might just see a sparkly kitty, your little one sees an underwater town detective who solves ghost mysteries and drives a giggle-powered pirate ship. Some fun, some food, it's all inside this Happy Meal. Until the 2nd of November from 11am includes one pre-selected book or toy while stocks last. Subject to availability. Speaker 6 (0:23) and welcome to the Week Junior Show. I'm Bex and I'm joined by writer Eve from the Week Junior and deputy editor Stevie from Science and Nature, the magazine's making sense of the world for 8 to 14 year olds. This week, the team will be talking about the Week Junior Book Awards, a tree's new shoots and whether pets should have birthday celebrations. Make sure you're listening closely because at the end of this episode, we'll be asking a question about what you've heard and if you answer it correctly, you could win a prize. But more on that later. Seeing as we'll be talking about pets birthday celebrations, I was wondering what would be your dream way to spend your birthday, Speaker 4 (0:57) Eve? Well, something I quite like to do on my birthday is go to the cinema to see a film I already know I like. I've done it before when I've dragged my friends to see an X-Men film at the cinema or Thunderbolts or these are all Marvel films, an Avengers film. All the time. So I'm thinking Dream Day would be, obviously I'd get no sunlight on this day, but that's fine. Just an entire marathon of all of my favourite films at the cinema. So I'm thinking Tangled, X-Men, maybe all of them, all the Avengers films. I don't know if I'll have time for all this. But yeah, maybe throw a Christmas film in there just for fun, even though, you know, it's not Christmas time. But anyway, I just think that would be a fun way to spend my birthday. What snacks are you sneaking in there, Eve? It's always going to be chocolate buttons, I think. Speaker 6 (1:50) Chocolate buttons. Okay, just a vat of chocolate buttons to get you through all of those Speaker 4 (1:55) films. Yes, but the chocolate buttons have to have a crunch to them so they can't melt. So we're going to need it to be quite chilly atmosphere in the cinema so that they don't melt. That can be arranged. We'll sort that out for you for your birthday. Speaker 5 (2:08) Lovely. Stevie, how about you? Well, I'm always on the go. I don't stop usually. Ideal day would just be to slow down. I'd probably get my nails done, maybe have a bit of a massage, go on a really nice long walk in nature and then like read my favourite book. That'd be my ideal day. That Speaker 6 (2:27) sounds dreamy. That sounds very chilled. Yeah. Now, I think I'm the opposite of both of you. Well, first of all, I love my birthday. I think birthdays are brilliant. And last year, my friends planned out my whole birthday for me. I didn't ask them to, they just did it. And... It was the best day ever. First of all, we went from McDonald's breakfast, thrilling for me. Then we went to a park and just had a nice time. Then they'd arranged to go to an inflatable 5K course. So it was basically like running through lots of bouncy castles, which was brilliant. Then we went for some cake at my favourite cake shop. Then we went and sat outside near the river in the sunshine, had a little picnic. And then we went to dinner at my favourite restaurant that they booked for me. It was the best day ever. Sounds amazing, to be honest. It was. I mean, the inflatable 5K, let's say I'm not the best at bouncing through 5K, but it was fun. I had a nice time. So I want to know what everybody's dream birthday is. Can you top my inflatable 5K, Eve's movie marathon, or Stevie's chilled out relaxing day? Send an email to hello at theweekjunior.co.uk or leave a voice note at funkidslive.com slash theweekjunior. Just grab a grown up, look for that big red button and then record your voice. If your voice note is played out next week, you could win a Week Junior roving reporter badge. Now last week, we asked listeners to tell us their favourite thing about autumn and we got a message here from Annabelle. Speaker 2 (3:48) Hello, my name is Annabelle and I am nine. My favourite thing about autumn is when you go on a walk, you can dress up warm and look at the different coloured leaves. Thank you. Bye. Speaker 6 (4:01) Annabelle, thank you. Yes, the different coloured leaves, especially when they fall on the ground and they're really crunchy and you can step on all of the different colours. Annabelle, thank you very much for that. If you want your voice to feature on next week's podcast... all you've got to do is go to funkidslive.com slash theweekjunior and send us a voice note to tell us your dream birthday. Speaker 6 (4:21) Now, Speaker 4 (4:22) let's Speaker 6 (4:22) turn our attention to the latest magazine and talk about what's been in the news headlines this week. Eve, what's the big story for the Week Junior? Speaker 4 (4:28) Well, as you know, Bex, because you were there, it was the Week Junior Book Awards this Monday on the 28th of September. And it was a night to celebrate the best in children's literature across 14 different categories. And it was such a brilliant night. So many amazing books won. I always love the Book Awards because you just get to meet so many cool people. But author Jack Mackay's spooky story, Glome, took home not one but two trophies, which was very cool. And this was for the audiobook category, which I judged, and the breakthrough category as well. And I actually spoke to him afterwards. And he's only 23, which to our listeners might not seem... very young, but to me, that seems incredibly young to have won two awards for a book. That's amazing. And he's just published another one as well. But also AJ Woods book, The Wizard's Guide to Magical Experiments won the STEM award and she wore an excellent wizard hat to the ceremony. So that was very cool. I remember seeing before the ceremony started, I saw someone wearing a wizard hat and I was thinking, who's the wizard? And then when she won and she stood up to pick up her award, I was thinking. That's the wizard. And it makes sense now. But other winners of awards that night included This Is Not a Small Voice, Poems by Black Poets, How to Be Disabled and Proud, Boss of the Underworld, Shirley vs. the Green Menace, A Tree is a Time Machine, World Kitchen Celebrations, 10 Children Who Changed the World, Don't Trust Fish. The Misadventures of Meena Mahmood and The Boy with Big Decisions. And there are also two categories chosen by children. So cover of the year went to Deep Dark, which is a Cassia Thorne mystery. And Bunny vs. Monkey Intergalactic Monkey Business won Children's Choice. So Jamie Smart was there to accept that award. And it was just such a great night. And I really love judging the audiobook category. Gloam is such a good story, but very, very spooky. But I really enjoyed it. But you both judged awards as well, didn't you? Speaker 5 (6:18) Yes, I did. I was on the shortlisting committee for the animals and environment category. And honestly, when I first picked up The Tree is a Time Machine, we had a lot of entries into that category and I have to read them all. That one stood out for me immediately. I think one of my comments in the shortlisting judging was, this is just an instant classic. Everyone should read this book. It was just phenomenal from the first time I picked it up. Oh, wow. That's Speaker 6 (6:45) high praise indeed. I had the older kind of like fact-based book. category. So the winner for my category was 10 Children Who Changed the World. Kind of like lots of stories of really inspirational kids from history who you may not have heard about. Such a fascinating book. Yeah, our judging category panel were like, yeah, everybody needs to read this book. And we know that if it gets a weak junior award, it will get loads more notice, basically. So we thought it was really important Speaker 4 (7:10)