D.W. Read (Arthur, seasons 1-15)

D.W. Read *finds out she's on this wiki* "Well, I didn't know. I'm just a child. Give me a break!" Gender: Female Type: Spoiled Brat Age: 4 4¾ (promotional) 5 (season 3) Species: Aardvark Portrayed by: Kelly Greenley (Living Books, Arthur's Teacher Trouble, Arthur's Birthday) Elizabeth Telefus (Living Books, Arthur's Reading Race, Arthur's Computer Adventure, Arthur's Birthday (activities only), DW the Picky Eater) Nolan Splavec Status: Alive Media of origin: Arthur First appearance: Arthur's Eyes Last appearance: All Grown Up

"I never thought about it before, but being an only child is nice."

— Buster Baxter, "Arthur's Big Hit" regarding D.W.'s behavior.

Dora Winifred "D.W." Read is a major character from the 1996 PBS Kids TV series Arthur. She is a preschooler who is Arthur's younger sister and Kate's older sister.

Bratty Qualities

1. She enjoys annoying and getting Arthur into trouble for no discernible reason.
2. She tends to be overly dramatic and bossy.
3. She hates her name and prefers to be called D.W. While there's nothing wrong with wanting to be called something shorter, hating your name is something else.
4. She is more gullible than any girl her age and believes everything she sees on TV.
5. Her voice can sometimes be grating, especially when she cries.
6. She tends to disobey orders, especially reasonable orders from Arthur.
7. There are a few episodes in which she is arguably at her worst, especially when she throws a lot of temper tantrums whenever she doesn't get her way, especially in season 2:
   • In "D.W. All Wet" (the episode that started her unlikable trend), she keeps on whining about her chapodiphobia.
   • In "D.W.'s Baby", on Kate's first birthday, she spills Kate's cupcake with her video camera and even stalks her sister while she's breathing, trying to bathe her and even letting her suffer. She even blames her for getting her father's new shoes in the dishwasher. Worst of all, she sells her at a yard sale for 50 cents and changes it to 35 cents.
   • In "D.W.'s Snow Mystery", she is obsessed with a snowball when a snowball is just an object. She blames Arthur for taking and melting it, despite him, Buster, and Francine making a tower and she even destroys Arthur's room and when they are playing detective she blames them, even Pal and aliens for taking her snowball.
   • In "D.W. the Picky Eater", she hates healthy foods, such as tomatoes, cucumbers, pickles, mushrooms, eggplants, pineapple, parsnips, cauliflower, liver, and even spinach and believes it's the most disgusting food in the universe. She flips her plate with spinach, which spills all over the waiter and causes everyone to stare at her, and she believes that everybody's making this into such a big deal. Thankfully, she lost her hatred for spinach at the end of the episode (which makes Popeye proud of her).
   • In "Play it Again, D.W.!", she annoys Arthur with her "Crazy Bus" CD, and when it goes missing, she blames Arthur for it, and worse, her parents and Francine apparently side with her.
   • In "D.W.'s Very Bad Mood", she throws a huge fit, constantly saying very mean and rude things to her family and friends, yelling at them at the top of her lungs, and making a lot of loud noise at night preventing them from sleeping, all because she didn't get invited to a birthday party her friend Emily did and she didn't even know or like the girl whose party it was.
   • In "Arthur's Big Hit", she breaks Arthur's airplane model and tries to blame Arthur for it to the point where he punches her.
   • In the Christmas special Arthur's Perfect Christmas, she throws a massive fit over getting a toy called Quackers instead of the toy she wanted, Tina the Talking Tabby, showing that she just wants everything, whether she likes it or not.
   • In “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, she fakes having laryngitis to make Arthur her servant.
8. Hypocrisy:
   • Speaking of BQ#7, in episodes like "D.W's Very Bad Mood", she accuses Arthur for ''bugging'' her, yet she does the same thing to Arthur herself, especially since he didn't do anything wrong. Granted that D.W. was upset that she didn't get invited to the birthday party, but she should not have this excuse to lash out at everybody like this...
   • In the same episode as shown in BQ#7, where she is at her absolute worst, she tells Arthur that ''he's bad'' after he wrongfully punched her, yet she was doing something bad as well, in which she steals Arthur's model plane because she thought it could fly, so she throws his plane outside of his window, only for it to break, and when Arthur finds out, she blames him for leaving it unattended much to the point where Arthur had the nerve to punch (for a lazy reasons her. Even worse, she never got punished for it and got away with her actions hence leaving Arthur to get in trouble for hitting her.
9. She tends to throw temper tantrums when things don't get her way.
10. No matter how poorly she behaves, she rarely gets any punishment. In other words, she often gets rewarded for her misbehavior in the end and gets off scot-free, thus making her a Karma Houdini.
11. She refuses to take advice from her imaginary friend, Nadine, who tries to be her conscience. She can also be cruel to her as well.

"Yo Mama!" Qualities

1. Her behavior is mostly caused by her parents.
2. When she isn't acting bratty, she is admittedly cute and funny.
3. She has quite a big imagination.
4. Her friendship with Binky, especially in the episodes "The Chips Are Down" and "Revenge of the Chip", and arguably one of the best moments for several Arthur fans.
5. Her fondness for unicorns is kind of adorable.
6. There are a handful of episodes where she is likable, such as:
   • “Arthur’s Knee”
   • ”Grandma Thora Appreciation Day”
   • "The Chips Are Down"
   • “Revenge of the Chip”
   • “Attack of the Turbo Tibbles”
   • ”Double Tibble Trouble”
   • ”Mom and Dad Have a Great Big Fight”
   • ”D.W.’s Library Card”
   • ”The Blizzard”
   • ”The Rat Who Came to Dinner”
   • ”D.W.’s Time Trouble”
   • ”Is There a Doctor in the House?”
   • ”Happy Anniversary”
   • ”Operation: D.W.!”
   • ”In My Africa”
   • ”Grandpa Dave’s Memory Album”
7. At times, she is shown to be quite intelligent for her age.
8. She occasionally gets punished for her actions, like when she gets called out by her mother after she throws her spinach at the waiter in "D.W. the Picky Eater", or at "More!", where she gets grounded by her parents sending her to her room for being disrespectful with Emily, saying to her parents how much money she would have if they started giving her an allowance last year, "when they were supposed to".
9. Thankfully, she's gotten some character development and has redeemed herself during seasons 16-25.
   • She improved somewhat starting in season 6, but not enough for her to be considered a good character until season 16
10. Depending on your view, she was a decent character for the first few episodes of season 1, until “D.W. All Wet”, which set her unlikable and bratty personality into motion.
11. Despite the flaws the show wouldn't sometimes be as great as it is without her.
12. She is slightly more tolerable in the books.

Trivia

• D.W. is based on Kim Brown, the sister of Marc Brown, who is the author of the Arthur books and the co-developer of the cartoon.
• According to the episode "D.W. All Wet", D.W. is cephalopodic, as she refuses to swim in a lake because she thinks there may be octopuses in it.
• D.W.'s birthday is either March 1, 1991, or March 1, 1992, making her either 4 or 5 years old in the first season, since the series premiered in 1996.
• Despite being considered one of the worst characters in the show, she was the star of many memes like "Tired D.W." (a photoshop of a frame in "Francine Frensky, Olympic Rider", "Sign Can't Stop Me Because I Can't Read", D.W.'s Name Game and Yo Mama! (which can be heard in the season 6 end credits)

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