Children's Entertainment News: How Alexa Woke a Sleeping Giant

NEW YORK, Sept. 3, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- This is a story about late bloomers. It is also a story about how virtual assistant, Alexa, awakened a sleeping giant.

Children's authors Robin MacBlane and Larry Whitler recently reinvented their characters, Robin And The Giant. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Robin And The Giant was a children's radio show featured on Digital Cable Radio. The duo wrote the dialogue, the songs, and the stories in the show. They also created a live stage show which they performed for elementary schools throughout Florida. In the shows MacBlane and Whitler played the characters they created.

While Robin And The Giant had local success they were mostly under the radar for the rest of the world.

In the early '90s, MacBlane and Whitler were in their 30s. Fast forward to 2017 and the two performers and radio hosts were now in their 60s. At lunch one day Whitler sketched cartoon versions of themselves based on their own childhood photos. He showed the sketch to Robin and the duo brainstormed to create illustrated children's books with this reinvention of the characters they had created three decades earlier.

Their books created a small buzz and a modest number of books were ordered from Amazon.

Then something amazing happened.

Users of virtual assistant Alexa discovered that by saying, "Alexa, play Robin And The Giant," they could hear the songs, the stories, and the dialogue that MacBlane and Whitler had produced all those years ago. The musical seeds planted in the late 1980s and early 1990s have now blossomed.

On the morning radio program they host on radio station WOCA in Ocala, Florida, Whitler said, "On one hand it feels like we recorded those songs yesterday. But, on the other hand, it feels like ancient history. We don't even remember all of our own songs. In fact, sometimes we have to ask Alexa to play our songs so we can recall them!"

MacBlane laughs, "Well, we always believed we were late bloomers."

The newest Robin And The Giant book for children is titled, "The Chanteuse Sleigh Ride." Just ask Alexa for it.

Oh, and don't worry about waking the Giant. He's glad to be awake!

To learn more, go to www.TheWorldOfRobinAndTheGiant.com.

Media contact:
Evan Gold
[email protected] 
352-229-4679

SOURCE Children's Entertainment News