Miriam and Friends

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Isaura Zapata  Isa is Natalina’s boisterous and flamboyant best friend, with a love of good food. Presumably Natalina’s first friend, she and Isa first acquainted at age four and have since remained inseparable. The Artiaga’s live only a few blocks from the Zapata’s, enabling the girls to interact frequently with one another and walk to the local elementary school together. Isa is very rambunctious and nimble, but occasionally slow-witted and tactless. She is somewhat oafish, claiming to feel “two steps behind” everyone else, yet exceptionally experienced and street-smart, having been raised in a predominantly Latin environment until her parents’ death. A romantic at heart, Isa is easily enamored and prone to crushes. She becomes uncharacteristically touchy-feely and romantic in regards to boys, and is quite prone to jealousy and temper tantrums when something does not go her way. She is a skilled gardener with a particular fondness for flowers, and at six, garnered a bouquet of flowers she grew spread on her mother’s tomb on Mother’s Day, with the aid of her nana. She enjoys cross-stitching with Rani in her spare time and arranging flower decors for close friends, as well as jewelry making, producing handicrafts and sewing and knitting with her nana (grandmother).

Melanie Vance  Melanie is a kind-hearted and affectionate child who sees every person she encounters as a potential friend. She generally has a positive attitude towards everything and everyone and, in her child-like demeanor, easily hugs, kisses, and playfully interacts with her peers. Docile and disciplined, she willingly adheres to the laws and regulations of her community, and with a love and desire for order, doesn’t mind occasionally undertaking the roles of a peacemaker. Because her father partook in the American military, Melanie spent three years stationed with her family in San Juan, Puerto Rico, exposing her to Hispanic culture and making her slightly bilingual. She moved frequently as a young child, starting from about age four, and has since had difficulty maintaining friendships and desired to remain in a place she can call her “home”.    Melanie is incredibly gentle and accepting, earning her acceptance and respect among friends, whom she openly counsels and assists if need be. Even so, she is frequently regarded as a “goody two-shoes” with her perfectionist tendencies and desire to please others. She is a delicate young girl with a slight case of mysophobia, frowning at the sight of disorderliness and contamination. Exceptionally spiritual, Melanie is also a devout Presbyterian whom enjoys spreading the word of God. She is deathly afraid of rats.

Orianne Paz  Rani is a very shy, but sweet-tempered and nurturing little girl, and is often regarded as one of Natalina’s best friends. She scarcely angers or displays ill-will towards others and proves to be very sensitive and meek. Although easily frustrated and overlooked, Rani’s patience never falters and her heart seems to have little space or tolerance for grudges; she seems to always forgive treat people with respect no matter what it is that they do. Rani’s quietness is often misconstrued and pointed out by her classmates, to her chagrin, yet she dreams to grow into a wise, socially graceful young woman whom offers guidance to others and is capable of learning from her mistakes. <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Exceptionally precocious and bright, Rani skipped the 2nd grade after being deemed “advanced” for her age by teachers, and at age 7, is among the youngest in the elementary school’s 3rd grade class. As a child, she was raised in an orange orchard in Florida, but moved to her mother’s hometown of Santa Rosa, California once her parents underwent a temporary “separation”. Her parents remain married, yet constantly feud over unresolved issues Rani and Winnie have been barred from discovering. As of yet, she misses her father terribly, chatting with him often through a webcam, and currently resides in her widowed grandfather’s house (across the street from Natalina) with her mother and sister. <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Rani enjoys reading and television; she seems particularly fond of the Percy Jackson and Magic Tree house series’, and shares a fascination with Pooh Bear with her younger sister.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 10pt 0.65in 14pt;"><span style="color: rgb(79, 129, 189); mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Gardenia Hinajosa  <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Dinnie is extremely gregarious and extraverted, constantly seeking and wanting to maintain the company of others. She enjoys being complimented and desires to be the centre of attention, becoming increasingly fussy and temperamental when neither is granted. She is incredibly active and flighty, wanting constant stimulation and having trouble remaining committed to friendships. Although generally well-intentioned, she unknowingly offends her peers by ignoring them for another person or thing that seems to offer more excitement. Dinnie is very bubbly, effervescent, and perky, and desires not to be regarded as a child, but as a young adult. <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Dinnie has always dreamed of traveling, exploring, and becoming an actress. She tires of the simple, quieter life of Santa Rosa that she’s been exposed to since the day she was born, and often complains of the neighborhood’s boredom and monotony. Strong-willed and hardheaded, she becomes quite desperate and impatient when wanting to meet a goal, and often feels burdened and ridiculed by her younger brother, Ira, a slow learner who some people regard as borderline retarded. She constantly claims that she wants to set out on her own the moment she turns eighteen, to her mother’s disapproval, and thinks people are “just too clingy and sensitive”. Despite her whininess, Dinnie is quite competent and independent for her age, able to complete numerous household tasks on her own, and seeks to live and a tidy, fragranced environment. Her best friend since childhood has been Crystal-Emily Michelle Brooks, who she sees as her “bestest, truest friend” and spends most of her time with. <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 10pt 0.65in 14pt;"><span style="color: rgb(79, 129, 189); mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Aimee Miller  <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Aimee is arguably Rani’s “other best friend” besides Natalina, and often the object of Natalina’s jealousy. A talented young writer, Aimee has an incredible fondness for poetry, mysteries, and fiction and spends much of her time scrawling stories and entries into her multiple diaries and journals. She is a curious child with a love of swing sets and hide-and-seek, and like Rani, has sometimes been regarded as being “a little too quiet”. Despite this, Aimee has a close group of school friends and spends much of her time with her cousin, Samantha. She seems very innocent and gullible and enjoys going deep into her fantasy world, with an expansive and endless bout of imagination. She is often seen strolling down the sidewalk with a wagon containing her extensive collection of 18 in. dolls, each having an eccentric name (ex.“Persephone Gay”, “Eldora Zenalda”, “Chardonnay Piper”, “Lhala-Dea Kelby”, “Nunzia Ultima”, “Zamonya Lavinia Syntyche”, etc.). She rarely goes to rest without her treasured stuffed ragged doll, “Maisey Lyric”. <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Aimee’s life has plagued by the emptiness of not having a stable father figure; her father was imprisoned when she was three years old, after an infamous incident with her grandmother in England, and has since remained a scarcely mentioned name in the Miller household. Her mother strives to forget her past and revamp her life by dating and involving herself with different men, and most recently, had pressured herself into marrying Cameron Carter, a local policeman, to satisfy the romantic void in her life. While Aimee gladly accepts the company of Keegan and Donella (her potential step-siblings), she feels forced to embrace Cameron as a father and adapt him into her lifestyle, causing her to shy away from his presence and feel some slight resentment toward her mother.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 10pt 0.65in 14pt;"><span style="color: rgb(79, 129, 189); mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Magenta Tenorio  <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Magenta is “a good kind of crazy”; she humors people with her zaniness and sarcasm, and is almost characteristically noted for her fondness of mentioning and discussing awkward subjects. Although sometimes classified as a “quiet, dark, and weird person”, Magenta is a happy-go-lucky, laid-back free-spirit with a love science, comics, and the paranormal. She gives little regard to what other people think of her, and when targeting a subject of interest, can be blunt to the point of rudeness and vulgarity. She knows many curse words an eight year child should not be exposed to and is inexplicably prone to clumsiness and accidents, to the endless disapproval of Maritza (mother of Natalina, one of her best friends). <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Regardless of her occasional absent-mindedness, Magenta enjoys studying and excels academically, constantly ranking at the top of her elementary school classes. She is a formidable painter with an enormous fascination with princesses, fairies, witches, and phantoms, and constantly engrosses herself in horror and sci-fi novels and flicks. Magenta is incredibly disorganized, odorous, and messy; her room is polluted with mottled clothing and acrid smells that repulse even her closest friends. Her quirkiness and traces of her constant experimentation are evident at one’s first encounter with her living space, and her creative play with her dolls (often victim to her infamous haircuts and “mutations”) are an intriguing sight to see. <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Magenta’s home life is generally very calm, relaxed, and sunny; she leads an alternative lifestyle with her parents by the motto “live and let life live” and spends much of her time alone with her toys. She was raised at an apartment in Santa Rosa until reaching age 8, in which her journalist father was promoted to a job offering in Chicago and decided to move his family to Illinois “to see a better change in life”. Her mother recently gave birth to another child, a baby girl whom Magenta herself named “Hopie”.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 10pt 0.65in 14pt;"><span style="color: rgb(79, 129, 189); mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Natalina Artiaga  <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Natalina is a sweet, but impressionable girl who often frustrates people with her meddlesomeness. She is prying, observant, and eager to help, with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and wish to understand every single truth and aspect about a person. Although good-natured and amiable, she can be overly demonstrative with her classmates, causing them to regard her as annoying and “a nuisance.” Natalina has painful, innate desire to love and be loved, and being rather naïve, is rather easy to upset and provoke. She is incredibly thoughtful for her age with a tendency to analyze and question things, but is predisposed to trust and accept people to a fault. She is an insecure child with a bad temper and a propensity to cry, and dislikes being regarded as “weak” and “girly” by her male classmates. She has an inherent confidence issue and often believes she is “simply not good enough”, emulating and comparing herself constantly to her more popular and well-received classmates. In spite of this, Natalina strives to remain consistent and optimistic and is incredibly attached to her closest friends, namely Isa, Rani, Aimee, Melanie, Dinnie (sometimes), and Magenta. <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Natalina leads a rather smooth and delicate lifestyle, in which she is constantly mollycoddled and catered to by her parents as one of the youngest in a family of five. She is very emotionally attached to her older brother Mateo, who seems to be the only person truly willing to put up with her garrulous rants, while she tries to serve as a teacher and “guardian angel” to her younger brother Noah, who at three years old prematurely started attending the local elementary school. She is much closer to her father than she is to her mother, a secretary who often seems exhausted and dissatisfied with her marriage, from which she claims “the love and zest has long fled.” <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Natalina suffers from Dysgraphia, a condition that impairs her ability to write. She dislikes reading and would rather create and share her own stories orally, but aspires to someday be able to successfully print them down on paper. She hopes to one day become a kindergarten teacher and accomplished children’s book author and often practices her teaching skills with her dolls.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 10pt 0.65in 14pt;"><span style="color: rgb(79, 129, 189); mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Samantha Eckles  <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Samantha is an introverted and emotionally-inhibited child; she is much more pragmatic, serious, and down-to-earth than many of her peers, but feels burdened by her family’s dysfunctional relationship. At age 8, Samantha is fraught with unreasonable expectations, unwarranted standards, and Sisyphean chores she must continuously tend to. She adapts her natural smarts into her love of math and deeply engrosses herself into her studies, so as to disconnect from her burdens. Even so, Samantha is remarkably creative and bright, with a knack for invention and renovating discarded objects. She shows an interest in woodwork and lapidary, which she often engages in with her aunt, and has an uncanny fascination with pressing flowers and scrapbooking. She owns an impressive collection of stickers as well, and has an enduring love for stuffed animals. <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Although hard-working and mature for her age, Samantha is laidback and easily amused, up to any person’s suggestions and a good laugh. She enjoys humor and possesses a sillier side to her personality and is tolerant of her friends’ schemes and mischief. Samantha loves and openly appreciates music as well, bring able to fluidly play multiple string instruments (most notably, the viola and acoustic guitar).

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="color: rgb(79, 129, 189); mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">                 Lela Sorrel  <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Miriam's good friend, a sprightly, frolicsome child who can usually be found in a buoyant mood. Lela enjoys self-disclosure and frequently musters to poke light-hearted fun at the people surrounding her, although her jocular disposition can occassionally lead to unintentional misunderstandings between her and her peers. Scarecely does Lela regard or consider what other people think,   often displaying a characteristically and winsome dispostion and freely engaging in childlike ventures. Rather than considering potential outcomes and consequences when making decisions, she often acts impulsively without much thought, provoking bedlam and occassional disputes around the neighborhood. She has an apparent dislike of Marlene's pretentiousness and desire to seem sophisticated, at one point having classified her as "stuffy and boring" with her continuous disapproval of the other children's "tastless, improper" adventures.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Lela is   fond of fragrance and uncannily fascinated with chocolates, managing to collect chocolate delicacies both from her father's position at a nearby bakery and from designated areas of the world. She characteristically has an insatiable sweet tooth, to her father's disapproval and enjoys smuggling glasses of warm milk and "special treats" before bed. She is particularly close to her sister Myra, whom despite often quarreling with and regarding her as a tag-a-long and nuisance, genuinely cares for and constantly tries to incorporate her into her activities. <span style="color: black; line-height: 115%; letter-spacing: 0.75pt; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="color: rgb(79, 129, 189); mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">                 Cynthia A. Voigt 

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">A kindly and good-hearted, but naive and highly gullible classmate of Miriam's. Cynthia is often generous and well-meaning, but because of significantly spoiled and sheltered upbringing, often makes   simple-minded and stereotypical assumptions of the world around her.

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