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

D.W. Read In "Sue Ellen’s Little Sister," Arthur was right about D.W. Her initials do stand for “Disaster Warning”. Gender: Female Type: Spoiled Brat Age: 4 4¾ (promotional) 5 (season 3) Species: Aardvark Portrayed by: Kelly Greenley Elizabeth Telefus Michael Caloz Oliver Grainger Jason Szwimmer Robert Naylor Status: Alive Media of origin: Arthur First appearance: Arthur's Eyes

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

Note: This only applies to her character in the first fifteen seasons of Arthur.

1. She enjoys annoying and getting Arthur into trouble for no discernible reason.
2. She has the tendency 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 own name is something else.
4. She is more gullible than any girl her age and believes everything she sees on TV.
5. Her voice is sometimes 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.'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 like the girl whose party it was.
   • 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 believed 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 obviously 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 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 like it or not.
   • In "Arthur's Big Hit", she breaks Arthur's airplane model and tries to blame Arthur for it to the point where he punched her.
   • In "D.W. All Wet" (the episode that started her unlikable trend), she keeps on whining about her fear of octopi.
   • In “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, she fakes having laryngitis to make Arthur her servant.
8. She has the tendency to throw temper tantrums when things don't get her way.
9. No matter how poorly she behaves, she often gets rewarded for her misbehavior in the end and gets away scot-free, thus making her a Karma Houdini.
10. She is basically a female clone of Caillou, as the two get the same age, they are therefore quite naughty and annoying.

"Yo Mama!" Qualities

1. When she isn't acting bratty, she is admittedly cute and funny.
2. She has quite a big imagination.
3. Her fondness for unicorns is kind of adorable.
4. There are a handful of episodes where she is likable, such as:
   • “Arthur’s Knee”
   • ”Grandma Thora Appreciation Day”
   • “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”
5. At times, she is shown to be quite intelligent for her age.
6. She occasionally gets punished for her actions, like when she got called out by her mother after she threw her spinach at the waiter in "D.W. the Picky Eater", or at "More!", where she gets grounded for being desrespectful with Emily, saying at your parents how much money she would have if they started giving her an allowance last year, "when they were supposed to".
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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 cephalophobic, 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 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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