Amazon’s Alexa is increasing the methods it may well play with youngsters — and this 12 months the sensible assistant has a brand new story to inform with an interactive bodily storybook, starring the identical Owl and Dragon cartoon character mascots that beautify Amazon’s present Echo Dot Youngsters audio system. 

The guide “Owl & Dragon, A Magical Journey” is a paperback image guide for younger readers that’s designed to be learn whereas an Echo speaker performs an Alexa talent program known as “Readyland.” There have been different Readyland books launched since 2021, however Owl and Dragon is the primary guide that offers Amazon’s speaker characters their very own story  — and if profitable, it opens up the potential for Amazon to increase these characters into extra types of media.

The characters Owl and Dragon are modeled after the purple dragon and teal owl designs printed on the 2022 launch of the Echo Dot Youngsters audio system. The guide from Readyland prices $15 and is obtainable for pre-order at the moment, releasing Sept. 30. The guide’s printed story can stand alone by itself when you learn every web page, however you will not get the complete story expertise with out downloading the Readyland talent and listening to the audio journey.

The thought is {that a} younger child might independently begin it by asking any Alexa-enabled machine within the house to “Play Readyland,” however a guardian might additionally play the audio facet from their smartphone with the free Alexa app.

I examined the guide with my very own youngsters: my 7-year-old daughter, who already is an impartial reader of chapter books, and my 4-year-old son, who’s simply beginning to discover ways to learn. Utilizing the Readyland guide turned an exercise they loved sharing collectively. Though I by no means had them play with an Alexa machine earlier than, they each picked up on how you can work together with it instantly utilizing the Echo Dot Youngsters speaker — they usually each have been hooked on seeing what occurred on each web page, shouting out solutions to the voice query prompts.

You may consider Readyland as an audio leisure program, the place youngsters will hear a narrative with completely different voices, music and video games woven all through. Youngsters assist the characters make choices by answering particular prompts throughout their journey. Youngsters can learn alongside the one or two sentences printed on a web page, however a lot of the expertise is listening. This system tells youngsters when to show to the following web page, and children should say “Prepared!” once they have turned the web page and are able to preserve going with the story.

I preferred how whenever you wanted to pause the story, you could possibly inform Readyland to cease anytime. The subsequent time the kid asks Alexa to open the Readyland program, it asks them in the event that they wish to choose up the place the story left off.

I used to be additionally impressed at how the programming is savvy sufficient to grasp the nuances of how little youngsters speak, and it has persistence for little ones that will take awhile to reply or might not use a phrase that this system is anticipating. It would by no means say a child is flawed — if the phrase is not acknowledged by this system, a personality acknowledges one thing was stated and pivots to the following level within the story. The Readyland program will give completely different nuggets of particulars concerning the story or characters relying on what a child says (many occasions the story is asking them to name out a picture they see on the web page, and children have a number of decisions on what to say).

Alexa has discovered its approach into the playroom earlier than, corresponding to by board video games and faux kitchens, concentrating on dad and mom that will already use an Echo speaker within the house. However this time, the play factors to particular audio system. The guide references the spherical Owl and Dragon audio system on the primary and final web page — which every value $60 and include parental controls and a 12 months’s subscription to Amazon’s Youngsters+ service. (You do not want these particular audio system to learn the books, however they appear extra enjoyable.)

Seeing my youngsters use the Owl & Dragon guide introduced again my childhood recollections of studying with Teddy Ruxpin, an animated toy bear from 1985 that instructed audio tales with music and sound results of his adventures. Again then, youngsters like me would observe together with Teddy’s story with matching storybooks that had just a few sentences. The audio wasn’t streamed over a Wi-Fi speaker, it was performed from a cassette tape in his stomach. And the books again then made barely a lot sense with out the Teddy Ruxpin audio to fill the gaps between pages.

Teddy obtained factors for being a cool fuzzy bear that moved its mouth to speak. However youngsters at the moment can truly speak again to those books utilizing Alexa’s voice recognition smarts, and the Readyland talent provides you one thing completely different within the story relying the way you work together. 

I would not go as far as to say mother and pop needn’t learn bedtime tales anymore — however Readyland simply seems like a nicer approach to give digital leisure to a child with out handing them an iPad display screen.