Marina Datillo

Marina Datillo
Gender	Female
Animal	Rabbit
Hair color	Brown
Residence	Datillos' House, Elwood City
Family	Mrs. Datillo (mother)

Marina Datillo is Prunella's blind best friend, who's usually seen with her eyes open. Despite being blind, she is still able to do many things, such as soccer by use of a beeper for her to hear in the ball. She also loves the book series Henry Skreever.

Biography

Meeting Prunella

She and Prunella met when Prunella unwillingly received a Braille edition of the latest Henry Skreever and the Cabbage of Mayhem and let Marina borrow it, and since then they have become inseparable. Marina is notably good at yoga and joined Prunella and her mother, Wanda, in their early-morning yoga routine. Marina lives with her mother, and her father is not currently a character in the series, though it has been mentioned that he works at the Elwood City Wildlife Center.

Physical appearance

Marina is an anthropomorphic animal with a white complexion, short brunette hair with bangs, a white shirt with a bluish-gray sweater over it, a bluish-green skirt, periwinkle socks, and umber brown shoes, and carries a white cane when she walks through town so she knows what is ahead of her.

Personality

Marina sometimes acts as Prunella's mature side. She is kind, understanding, and helpful, although she hates it when people fuss about her because she is blind. This shows that she has some level of independence. She tends to master things quickly (one example is when she does a more complex move in yoga). Marina is also very athletic and plays on a soccer team. Marina also sometimes gets competitive and this sometimes leads to her downfall.

Character development

WGBH had first proposed the concept of a blind character at a story meeting. She was not based on any characters from Marc Brown's books. To keep her character somewhat authentic, they brought in a blind man to the meeting for advice on what to do and not to do.

Marina is a rabbit. However, an interview by Scholastic with Marc Brown incorrectly claimed she was "a variation on a dog". Greg Bailey says that one of the character design artists at Cinar had given her a non-rabbit nose by accident and he did not catch the mistake at the time. He also suggests that Marc Brown was going by memory for the interview and was not familiar with the character, though he adds that Brown wasn't completely wrong, due to the nose.

Appearances

Arthur

• 603a. Prunella's Special Edition
• 709a. Prunella Sees the Light
• 907a. Three's a Crowd
• 1103b. Prunella Packs It In
• 1305b. Prunella and the Disappointing Ending
• 1308b. Prunella and the Haunted Locker
• 1710b. Brain Freeze (cameo appearance)
• 1804b. The Tardy Tumbler

Postcards from Buster

• 209. This Just In!

Trivia

• On the show's official website, You've Got Braille (a section of Prunella's page) is a play on America Online's "You've Got Mail!"; although it is used to translate the Roman characters into braille characters with raised dots.
• Most of her appearances are in episodes that feature Prunella as the central character.
• In "Prunella Sees the Light" from season 7, Marina is shown to be from Mighty Mountain Elementary because she plays on their team.
• After the Henry Skreever franchise was done, Marina stopped appearing in episodes until Season 17.
  • In Brain Freeze she reappeared with Prunella for the first time since Season 13.
  • She reappeared again in Season 18.

Gallery

The full image gallery for Marina Datillo may be viewed at Marina Datillo/Gallery.