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Cast of Characters
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Erin Isabelle Spotsworth-Becker |
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Erin Isabelle is a student in Mr. Bingo's fifth-grade at Dream City's Nell Flanders
School for Girls. Erin is bright, normal girl with a good memory and a bit of musical
talent. Though she would like to spend more of her time with her friends Monique,
Sanja and Katy, she is often too busy keeping her inventor parents out of trouble.
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Dr. Spotsworth (Dad) |
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Dad is an extremely brainy scientist, though quite shy and forgetful. He builds
fantastically clever creations that have unintended consequences. He is shown here
at a press confrenece explaining his Cyclopedia, a Ferris-Wheel-bus powered by passengers
sitting on bicycles arranged around the wheel. Only an hour before, the prototype
lost control in Morpheus Park, crashed through the conservatory and squished Mayor
Tewksbury's prize orchids. Eventually it wobbled to a stop and collapsed against
an apartment building frightening several ladies sitting in their bathtubs.
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Dr. Hildegard Becker (Mom) |
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Mom is a biochemist and also an inventor of troublesome gizmos. Her "String Along"
was very sticky string-from-a-can designed to allow passengers to literally "catch
a plane" flying past. Unfortunately it exploded in the lab. Firemen had to cut her
out of its rubbery web with fire axes. Her "Boring Beehaviary" was a roach motel
for bees. Instead of killing the bees with sticky poison, it lulled them to sleep
with recordings of dreary political speeches. Regrettably the droning speeches caused
people nearby to drop to the floor and snore for hours.
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Saffron Chilliwack |
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Saffron Chilliwack is an eccentric billionaire with a chartreuse fur coat and a
pink beehive hairdo. She arrives in our story with a tale of having lost her family
of struggling whalers and her plucky cat Boots when their ship rolled over in an
Arctic storm. She claims she was rescued by a Narwhal who plopped her on an iceberg
and fed her chum salmon until help arrived. Having made her own fortune, Saffron
loves to help clever young people realize their dreams. She and Erin Isabelle become
fast friends while Erin Isabelle gives her a tour of her parents' trove of fantastic
but unsuccessful inventions.
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(Uncle) Charles Spotsworth |
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Dad's tough older brother, Charles was determined to stand up to their rather tyrannical
British father. When the old man tossed Uncle Charles out of the house at sixteen,
he survived by becoming a pickpocket and cat burglar. Only eleven at the time, Dad
hid in his world of books and equations.
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Lalu |
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Lalu is a waitress at Bawlin' Jay's resturaunt on Milky Way. Every day at noon for
months Uncle Charles quietly sat at Lalu's counter, placed his order without looking
at her, then watched her every move once she turned away. Finally he steeled himself
and spoke to her. Several weeks later he asked her to go to the movies with him.
Though his still a little reluctant to give her is heart, he is definitely smitten.
Early in the story Uncle Charles takes his niece to Bawlin' Jay's where Lalu and
Erin form a fast friendship.
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Dr. Cadeus Vulpine |
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Dr. Cadius Vulpine is Dean of Science and Mom and Dad's boss. He is a pompous, odious
man who makes Erin Isabelle think of "a cockroach wriggling from her salad." Rumors
have been going around that he is going to fire her parents, though recently he
does seem interested in their new Fusionator "gizmo," as Dad calls it - perhaps
a little too interested.
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Mayor Tewksberry |
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Poor Mayor Tewksberry has had enough of Dream City's most infamous inventors! Wasn't
it enough that Mom's Cupric Accumulator stripped all of the copper wire from an
electical substation plunging the city into darkness? Was it too much to ask that
her hundred foot tall Cyclopedia not wobble through the Morpheus Park Conservatory
crushing the mayor's prize orchids? Did Dad's Thumperilla have to thrum around the
jobsite reducing the unfinished business building to a pile of beams? What's next?
What indeed!
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