D.W. Read

Dora Winifred "D.W." is Arthur's younger sister, Baby Kate's older sister, and a middle child in her family. She attends Elwood City Preschool.

Appearance
Like the rest of her family, D.W. is an anthropomorphic aardvark. Her brown hair and the shape of it comes from D.W. She has brown hair in the form of a Bob cut, which is up to her cheeks plus, she has bangs. She wears a white long-sleeved bodysuit and a pink jumper with blue and green Mary Jane shoes. D.W. also has many alternate outfits: Her footsie pajamas, pink frilly swimsuit, red polka dot dress (usually worn to formal occasions), her Arthur outfit, gymnastics suit, and many more. In some of the books, she wore pink overalls. In the episode Double Tibble Trouble, she wore green overalls. In the summer she either wears a dress and a short sleeved shirt, or shorts and a blue T- Shirt, like in D.W.'s Deer Friend, when she went camping. She also wears her blue T- Shirt with gray jeans.

Personality
D.W. is often annoying to Arthur (he considers her a pest) and sometimes, she takes pleasure in getting him in trouble, but deep down, she truly loves her brother. D.W. gets along well with most of her friends, but often becomes very dramatic when things don't go her way and sometimes becomes too bossy. She is known for her many short-lived obsessions and temper tantrums, two of her longest-lived ones being Mary Moo Cow and the song, "Crazy Bus," both of which annoy Arthur to no end. She also has an imaginary friend named Nadine, whom she plays with and confides her problems to when no one else is around. She hates her full name and she has everyone call her "D.W." for short instead. She also seems to be very protective of Kate.

Based on Marc Brown's real-life younger sister Kim Brown, D.W.'s character reflects (possibly Marc's) view of a bratty younger sibling who often makes things more difficult than they need be. Kim travels the country, presenting at schools telling her story as "The Real D.W."

Being a preschooler, she often doesn't understand the definition of words and she tries to use complex words for her age, such as "taxpaying" and she accidentally turns them into words like "taxipaying". She also doesn't grasp important topics like where babies come from, in which she thought that they come from a large baby store.

D.W. has a fear of octopuses, and once she endured a short-lived fear of fire drills (and anything else related to fire). She is a very picky eater and once, she had a profound hatred of spinach. She once had a snowball which was stolen from the fridge (apparently by aliens) and she frequently blames Arthur for its disappearance, which is a running gag. She did this continually until Arthur tried to make her feel better by giving her what looked like her snowball, at which point D.W. admitted that he couldn't have taken it from her.

D.W. is also very gullible. She believes that anything she sees on TV that is enhanced to look good is good. This is suggested in "D.W. Goes to Washington," where Arthur brings up the story when they went to "Santa's Igloo" where you shared a sundae with "Santa" and you had to buy a sundae to share it with the guy in the Santa costume. Also, she is frequently tricked by the Tibble Twins into doing silly things that get her in trouble, even though she has acknowledged many times that the Tibbles always lie.

Past life
When D.W. was a baby, she originally had just clumps of hair, but in later seasons, it depicted her with a similar, but shorter, hairstyle. During her babyhood, she wore a pink shirt, white disposable diapers, and pink socks. She also had the same crib that had eventually become Kate's crib.

Future life
Not much was shown about her future life, although in "D.W.'s Time Trouble," she and Nadine looked older in one scene during D.W.'s dream where she wished that she was older than Arthur.

Other media
In the Living Books computer games, she had a brown complexion and orange hair in Arthur's Teacher Trouble and then had a pale complexion and light brown hair in Arthur's Birthday, and she wore a purple shirt instead of a white one while wearing a jumper or overalls. It was likely because of color and tone restrictions during the 16-bit era of computers and software. In these two games, she was voiced by Helena McAnham and it was by far her only female voiceover in the series, and the cartoon show that first aired in 1996, a few years after the first release of those two Living Books games had always voiced her with a male voiceover. D.W. was originally voiced by Michael Caloz in the first three seasons. Oliver Grainger took his place for Seasons 4-6, then Jason Szwimmer took over for Seasons 7-10. As of Season 11-15, she is voiced by Robert Naylor and Sofia Sacha Naylor provides her singing voice in Arthur's Perfect Christmas and "In My Africa." Since Season 16, she is currently voiced by Jake Beale.

In the later games during the 32-bit era of computers and software (such as Arthur's Thinking Games), her appearance was the same as she looks in the cartoon show.

Family
D.W. lives with her family which consists of her father (David Read), her mother (Jane Read), her older brother (Arthur Read) and her baby sister (Baby Kate).
 * Arthur Read: Usually Arthur and D.W are seen fighting with each other, especially over their TV time and when she annoys him, but they also truly love and care for each other. A usual theme with Arthur and D.W, is Arthur usually forgets to play with D.W the games he promised her. It was noted that Arthur used to play with D.W all the time, until Arthur believed that D.W liked "baby stuff." She is naturally better than Arthur in many activities such as fishing , storytelling, and coming up with a tune for music , which made him very jealous of her. In most of her brother's fantasies, D.W. was often cast as an antagonist.
 * Baby Kate Read: Baby Kate is D.W's younger sister who looks up to D.W. and does favors for her regularly with Pal, e.g. finding her lost sock . In the time she was born, D.W. was displeased when she had to share her room with Kate, and was planning various ways to get rid of her, or else she wants to move away. At one time, D.W. threatened to pinch Kate for taking away her toys and was sent to her room for ten minutes. Despite her initial disfavor of Kate, D.W. has come to deeply love and care for her little sister, and take an active interest in her development.
 * Pal: D.W. and Arthur's dog Pal are in a love-hate relationship. Pal likes D.W. and D.W. regularly dislikes him and thinks that he is dumb, but sometimes treats him nicely.

Friends
D.W has many preschool friends such as Emily, The Tibbles and James.


 * Emily: Emily is D.W's best friend, but is often trying to compete with her and is jealous often. She is of French descent and has a French nanny named Marie-Helene.


 * Tommy and Timmy Tibble: The Tibbles are D.W's friends, but often try to compete with her and pester her. They are also known to lie to D.W., often misleading her into doing foolish things for their own amusement. D.W. often finds herself at odds with them, but they usually make up later.


 * James MacDonald: James is a friend of D.W.'s who is very shy at times. D.W. tried to get him to kiss her once, thinking she would become a princess like Emily (who felt like a princess when she was kissed in Paris). He eventually did kiss her, but not much came of it, other than D.W. looking slightly shocked and she had difficulty speaking for a while afterwards. This may be because she and James (despite their young age), have feelings for each other. They are usually on pretty good terms with each other.


 * Lisa: Lisa is a girl in D.W.'s pre-school who may or may not be a friend of D.W. She once got D.W. into a very bad mood when she didn't invite D.W. to her birthday party, as D.W. was insulted when Emily was invited and not her. Very little is known about their current relationship.


 * Vicita Molina: Vicita and D.W. are next-door neighbors and occasionally play together. They are able to relate to each other easily because Vicita is only half a year younger than D.W. They generally get along and Vicita often looks up to D.W., but D.W. can occasionally be bossy and dislikes it when Vicita excels at games that she doesn't.


 * Binky Barnes: D.W. is friends with Arthur's classmate Binky. They became friends after D.W. ate a green potato chip and was tricked by Arthur into thinking they were poisoned. She told Binky this and they became friends after they decided to spend the last of their days together, only to learn later that their poisoning was nothing more than a prank. They remained friends and they have even done ballet together, and have remained on good terms since.
 * Nadine Flumberghast: D.W.'s imaginary friend. They talk to each other a lot, and go on different adventures with each other. They think out many different problems together, usually resulting in Nadine not knowing anything more than D.W.'s knowledge.

D.W. Books
In addition to the Arthur Adventure titles, D.W. has appeared in a number of titles in her own series, including:


 * D.W., the Picky Eater
 * D.W. Thinks Big
 * D.W. Flips!
 * D.W. Rides Again
 * D. W., Go to Your Room!
 * D.W.'s Lost Blankie
 * D.W.'s Library Card
 * D.W.'s Guide to Perfect Manners (D.W. Says Please and Thank You)
 * D.W.'s Guide to Preschool (D.W. Goes to Preschool)
 * Glasses for D.W.
 * Good Night, D.W.
 * D.W. the Big Boss
 * D.W.'s Perfect Present

Many of these titles were adapted for the television series, while some were initially aired as television stories and later adapted as books.

Trivia

 * She is modeled after author Marc Brown's sister, Kim Brown.
 * D.W. cannot read and claims to not know time even though she knows when Mary Moo Cow comes on TV and whenever New Year's starts.
 * She cannot write, except for her own name.
 * It is clearly known that D.W hates Bionic Bunny, but in the episodes, "D.W. the Copycat" and "Arthur and the Crunch Cereal Contest", D.W. is watching and laughing. Though, in the former, she was most likely faking interest in the show as she was acting like Arthur in the episode.
 * D.W. has 38 episodes throughout the entire series with her name in the title, 39 if you count the episode "Read and Flumberghast", as Read is referring to her last name. Season 1 has the most episodes (10) with her name in them.
 * In "Clarissa is Cracked", it is revealed that she closely resembles Grandma Thora as a young girl.
 * In the episode, "Postcards from Buster", it is revealed that she used to have an imaginary friend that was a pig named "Snooter".
 * When Arthur says that D.W. doesn't like anything, in D.W., the Picky Eater, D.W. defiantly states that she likes: peanut butter & jelly, strawberries, chocolate (without nuts), birthday cakes, and chocolate ice cream.
 * D.W. also likes spinach (or at least claims to after unwittingly eating it in a pot pie), and yaprak dolmasi, a Turkish dish.
 * In "D.W. Swims With The Fishes", she wears a one-piece ordinary pink swimsuit instead of the pink frilly swimsuit.