Book Awards and skipping school for sport
The Week Junior Show
Fun Kids
4.6 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode, Bex is joined by Week Junior writers Eve and Joe to explore the biggest stories from the latest issue, including:
- The Week Junior Book Awards 2026: Find out which books made the shortlist, how judging works, and how YOU can vote for your favourite book cover and Children's Choice Award! Get all the voting details and your chance to win a big bundle of books.
- A Teeny Octopus Discovery: Hear about the newly discovered, golf-ball-sized octopus off the Galápagos Islands, including its remarkable colour and name.
- Big Debate: Is it okay to miss school for sport? With huge sporting events coming up, including the World Cup, the team tackles whether skipping class for sports is a good idea, and your opinions are wanted!
Get involved: Send your voice notes, share your opinions on the big debate, and tell us what you’ve been doing with The Week Junior! Visit funkidslive.com/theweekjunior or email hello@theweekjunior.co.uk.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Looking forward to the World Cup. |
| 0:02.2 | Get match ready with BBC Match of the Day magazine. |
| 0:05.5 | Subscribe now and you'll get a free World Cup special issue packed with star players, |
| 0:11.0 | expert insight and football fun. |
| 0:14.1 | Subscribe before the 22nd of June for just £44.99 for six months. |
| 0:20.5 | Lead the squad, this World Cup. |
| 0:27.2 | Hello and welcome to The Week Junior show. |
| 0:30.1 | I'm Bex and I'm joined by writers Eve and Joe from The Week Junior, |
| 0:33.7 | the magazine Making Sense of the World for 8 to 14-year-olds. |
| 0:36.9 | This week, the team will be talking about the short lists for this year's Week Junior Book Awards, a tiny octopus, and we'll be having a big debate about whether it's okay to miss school for sport. So make sure you're listening closely, because at the end of this episode, we'll be asking you a question about what you've heard, and if you answer it correctly, you could win a prize. But more on that later, there is a story in this week's magazine |
| 0:58.9 | about a statue of football star Lionel Messi that had to be taken down because it kept swaying |
| 1:04.1 | in the wind. So that got me thinking, who do you think deserves to have a statue put up of them? |
| 1:09.6 | Eve, how about you? Well, I have been really |
| 1:13.7 | obsessed with the Artemis II mission this year that flew around the moon. So I think it would |
| 1:19.4 | be really cool, but I'm sure there are probably already plans in motion for this to happen. But I think |
| 1:23.6 | it would be really cool to have a statue of the four astronauts that flew around the moon on the Artemis II mission. So that's Christina Cook, Victor Glover, Jeremy Hanson, and Reed Wiseman. I just think they're all so cool. But if I could just mention one more person, something I've also talked about a lot on this podcast is how much I love Wallace and Grommet. And I think it would be really cool to have a statue of the creator of Wallace and Grummit, Nick Park. And if it could be put up in Bristol, which is where the Ardman Studios are based. So, yeah, I'm going for Artemis II, crew, and Nick Park as well. Some great choices there. I've got to accept it and respect it. Joe, how about you? I'd also pick more than one person. |
| 2:02.9 | My choices are Sebastian Sarway and Yomif Kajeltsha. |
| 2:06.7 | These are the runners who came first and second in the London Marathon recently, |
| 2:10.3 | became the first people in an official race to run a marathon under two hours. |
| 2:14.6 | Sarway did it in an incredible one hour, 59 minutes and 30 seconds, |
| 2:19.3 | while Kajelchi ran a reasonably speedy, one hour, 59 minutes and 41 seconds. And that record |
| 2:26.5 | can never be taken away from them. They'll always be the first to have done it. And as they did |
... |
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