Dear Dumb Diary

Characters

Main

• Jamie Kelly is an awkward, easily embarrassed middle school girl who owns the diary and narrates the stories. She is passionate about art and glitter and is generally thought of as weird or eccentric. She loves koalas and has coulrophobia. Jamie typically has a sarcastic nature and enjoys teasing and deriding those around her in her diary. While most of this is lighthearted, she particularly enjoys putting down her favorite targets including adults and authority figures such as her teachers and school staff, her friend Angeline, the lunchroom monitor Ms. Bruntford, the bully Pinsetti, her dog Stinker, other students, clowns, and on occasion her best friend Isabella, among many others. She is part of the Student Awareness Council and the Cusine Club. Named after Jim Benton, whose full name is James Kelly Benton. She is portrayed by Emily Alyn Lind in the film adaptation.
• Isabella Vinchella is Jamie's mean and hotheaded best friend who is often manipulative, foul-tempered, prone to intimidation tactics, and even outright unpleasant, as a result of having grown up around two older brothers who enjoy bullying and belittling her. Regardless of these traits, Jamie insists on being her friend throughout everything, even admiring her for her violence as they became friends when Isabella beat up a boy for making fun of her name, and Jamie complimented her by comparing her to a "dangerous little mousetrap that you shouldn't put your fingers in". She is a master of faking injuries to frame her two mean older brothers for inflicting them. She is part of the Video Game Club. She is portrayed by Mary-Charles Jones in the film.
• Angeline is a beautiful and popular girl who, despite seeming to embody the mean popular girl stereotype in earlier books where Jamie sees her as more of an enemy, is actually very nice and loves donating to charities. She constantly strives to be seen as more than just beautiful and popular. She considers herself a very good friend of Jamie and her Aunt Carol and Uncle Assistant Principal Devon, and has helped them multiple times, despite Jamie believing she is plotting against her. In Am I The Princess Or The Frog? she is revealed to be Jamie's kindergarten friend known as "Annie" due to a speech impediment. Her last name is unknown, but her father's name is known to be Angelo. She is head of the Student Awareness Council. She is portrayed by Sterling Griffith in the film.

Major

• Stinker is Jamie's old and overweight male beagle, known for farting who despite Jamie believing him to be ugly and stinky, and often playing pranks on him, is very much well-loved. Along with Pinsetti, he is the source of most of the gross-out humor in the books. He is believed to have died in the book Dear Dumb Diary Deluxe: Dumbness Is A Dish Best Served Cold after swallowing Jamie's late grandmother's bracelet, but a miracle surgery funded by Jamie, Isabella and Angeline's partnership with the salad dressing company saves his life. He is portrayed by a Jack Russell Terrier in the film.
• Aunt Carol is Jamie's beautiful aunt who works as a secretary in Mackerel Middle School and is married to Uncle Assistant Principal Devon. While they were still dating, the identity of Devon as Aunt Carol's boyfriend was kept a secret, and Jamie kept force-feeding Stinker beans as an excuse for her to leave her room because of the smell of his farts, so she can eavesdrop on her mother and Aunt Carol's conversations. This does not succeed, and Stinker doesn't fart until the day of Carol and Devon's wedding at Jamie's house causing everyone to evacuate due to nearly a month's worth of gas from beans stewing in his belly. In the book The Problem With Here Is That It's Where I'm From, Isabella successfully tricks Aunt Carol into believing long white wedding dresses are no longer in style and that wooden clogs and brown poofy dresses are the latest fashion among young brides of Hollywood, but after Jamie and Isabella make a big show out of fake-falling down the stairs in the clogs, Carol ends up buying them new shoes. The poofy dresses were also stolen by Devon before the wedding. Aunt Carol is portrayed by Laura Bell Bundy in the film.
• Uncle Assistant Principal Dan Devon is Jamie's uncle and assistant principal of Mackerel Middle School, who is also Angeline's uncle on her mother's side, making Angeline Jamie's cousin-in-law. Jamie was disgusted by the marriage making her somehow related to Angeline and on occasion had tried to separate them. Due to being Jamie's uncle, he serves as Jamie's connection to the school when he wants her, Isabella and Angeline to plan out events. He is portrayed by James Waterston in the film.
• Jamie's mother is known for her horrible cooking which she attempts to force onto her daughter and husband, nevertheless she makes decent hors d'ouvres. In the book You Can Bet On That she is also known for making horrible clothes which she forces onto her daughter, husband and Isabella, described as looking like "monkey vomit". Aside from her gross cooking and fashion sense she is a decent person. Her sister who likes annoying her is Aunt Carol. She is portrayed by Maddie Corman in the film.
• Jamie's father is generally a gross person as well as boring. He can never get names right and constantly calls Stinker "Jamie" and vice versa. He also calls Isabella "Isadora" and Angeline "Angela" despite being corrected multiple times. He is portrayed by Jeffrey Hanson in the film.
• Stinkette is one of a litter of four puppies whose parents are Stinker and Angeline's dog Stickybuns. Jamie adopts her due to her resemblance and attachment to her father.
• Hudson Rivers is a boy who both Jamie and Angeline have a crush on despite Hudson being said to be the "eighth cutest boy in the school". He is shown as having crushes on both Jamie and Angeline, but neither of them as big as his crush on Isabella, who he asks out to have tacos with him after the school dance in Never Underestimate Your Own Dumbness, but she tells him she couldn't come as she was being punished for fake-falling down the stairs. He asks out Jamie and Angeline, but they ultimately decline his offer, believing that he rejected Isabella when he told them she couldn't come. He is portrayed by David Mazouz in the film.
• Mike Pinsetti or Antonio Michael Pinsetti, more frequently known simply as Pinsetti, is an unpleasant bully character, described as a "human sack of turds", who likes making poorly-thought-up nicknames for every student in the school. He is somewhat afraid of Angeline, who punched him when he called her "big weird thing", as was revealed in the book Dear Dumb Diary Deluxe: Dumbness Is A Dish Best Served Cold. He has a crush on Jamie which she justifiably rejects. Generally known for disgusting habits and poor hygiene, after meeting the substitute lunchroom monitor Sebastian Bruntford in The Super-Nice Are Super-Annoying, he attempts to mend his reputation by becoming well-mannered and polite, wearing ties and suggesting a fancy dance party. He is portrayed by Carson Oliver in the film.
• Colette is a girl from Wodehouse Middle School who was constantly bullied due to various incidents and as result she has no friends. As revenge she placed rotting cat food in her school's ventilation causing the school to be shut down temporarily. During that period, she is transferred to Mackerel Middle School where she befriends Isabella, Jamie and Angeline, while the school handed out ballots so students could vote for each other in categories such as prettiest, most artistic, funniest etc. Colette seems to be highly competitive with Angeline who is only ever voted Prettiest each year, using makeup to make herself even more beautiful so as to be voted for Prettiest in order to save her reputation, resulting in Angeline writing "VOTE JAMIE FOR PRETTIEST" on the bathroom walls to have Jamie steal votes so Angeline can stay as Prettiest as she "wasn't about to lose her one lame category". After discovering Colette's tragic backstory, Isabella persuades Colette, Angeline and Jamie to agree to her plan, presumably involving switching the ballots for Colette's title of Most Clever into Prettiest, leading to Colette winning the vote and saving her reputation.
• Miss Bruntford is the school's cafeteria monitor who forces everyone to eat the school's disgusting meatloaf on Thursdays. She is very accident prone due to her obesity combined with her tiny high-heeled shoes. Jamie often jokes about her fatness, even stating she could have her own planetary orbit. In the book Am I The Princess or the Frog? she eats her own meatloaf and faints while yelling, "Call 911!" While Bruntford recovers, Jamie's mother is called on to be the acting cafeteria monitor but her meatloaf is far worse, and this is believed to be a set-up by Bruntford to make her own meatloaf look better by comparison. She becomes Isabella's co-conspirator in the attempt to stop Ms. Anderson from coming to Devon and Carol's engagement announcement party. In The Super-Nice Are Super-Annoying she is revealed to be rather wealthy, living in a lavishly decorated mansion with her son Sebastian. Her now-deceased husband was the previous cafeteria monitor. In Nobody's Perfect. I'm As Close As It Gets, it is revealed that the school had been buying cheap meatloaf to save money for high-quality ground coffee at the teachers' lounge, this being a conspiracy orchestrated by Bruntford and science teacher Mrs. Curie. When Jamie reveals to the whole school staff how terrible the meatloaf is, Thursday is no longer meatloaf day, but rather "surprise day", where Bruntford goes around asking for feedback on her new improvised food. She is portrayed by Lea DeLaria in the film.
• Sebastian Bruntford is Miss Bruntford's son who takes over her cafeteria monitor duties in The Super-Nice Are Super-Annoying. He is a handsome and polite young man who Jamie and Isabella attempt to romance when he talks with them and Angeline during lunch, using their school assignment about manners as an excuse to charm him. In contrast, Angeline deliberately acts mean when Sebastian is around, due to her not wanting to be seen as merely a "delicate and well mannered creature of grace". Despite attempting to romance him for his wealth, Isabella abandons Sebastian upon discovering that if she married him, she would become Miss Bruntford's daughter in law.
• Miss Valerie Anderson is Jamie's favorite teacher who becomes the main antagonist of Can Adults Become Human? She is the art teacher who is in love with Uncle Assistant Principal Devon and despises Aunt Carol. Before finding out Devon is engaged to Carol, she presents the students with an assignment to make an anonymous valentine card, of which Jamie's card ends up being used by Anderson to ask Devon out to lunch, which he throws in the trash. Enraged by this outcome, Anderson attempts to ruin Devon and Carol's engagement announcement party, but Bruntford and Isabella, feeling sorry for Aunt Carol, pop her car tires before she can arrive. Furthermore, Angeline appears asking to help Anderson replace her tire but then lies about losing the nuts, implying she too is part of the conspiracy. Anderson arrives via tow truck and seems to be on surprisingly good terms with Devon and Carol, seemingly having fallen in love with the tow truck driver. In Nobody's Perfect. I'm As Close As It Gets, she is shown teaching the Cusine Club the value of money and about food budgeting. When Bruntford and Curie's meatloaf conspiracy is unveiled, Anderson suggests a number of alternatives to the meatloaf that students would enjoy better while costing just as much. She is portrayed by Jacque Gray in the film, where her name is Holly Anderson.
• Margaret Parker is a nerdy, unpopular girl with a habit of pencil-chewing. In the book My Pants Are Haunted she is given a makeover by Jamie and Isabella, including wearing a pair of high-end BellAzure jeans, and becomes unexpectedly more popular than Jamie, Angeline and Isabella. This, together with an incident where the jeans made a fart noise while Jamie wore them in front of Hudson, led Isabella and Jamie to believe the pants were demonically possessed, hence the book title. It is revealed that the reason for Margaret's popularity wasn't because of the jeans, but because of a bottle of Isabella's perfume concoction snuck into Margaret's bag by another girl named Sally Winthorpe so she could test its effects and hopefully use the perfume to get with Hudson.
• Sally Winthorpe is Margaret's friend who is known as one of the smartest kids in school. She is revealed to have orchestrated the events of My Pants Are Haunted, placing Isabella's perfume sample "superfragrance" in Margaret's bag to boost her popularity in order to test its effects to see if it would work with Hudson Rivers, who she had a crush on, and her attempt succeeded.
• T.U.K.W.N.I.F., short for "That Ugly Kid Whose Name I Forget", is Jamie's nickname for a shy, introverted unpopular boy in her school who she considers the absolute pinnacle of hideousness, also called "That One Kid". In the book That's What Friends Aren't For, he plays the piano with Jamie's art piece attached to its front during the talent show. When Jamie's mother calls him "Tuck or Tuckster", Jamie suspects that his name is indeed "Tukwnif", but it is revealed to actually be "Tucker".
• Emmily or Emily is a dim-witted but friendly and innocent girl who wins Jamie's "best friend auditions" designed to keep Angeline from stealing Isabella's attention from Jamie. She spells her name with two M's because she loves M&M's, not because of the M markings on the chocolates but because of the "mmm" sound she makes while eating them.
• Dicky Flartsnutt is a boy who is part of the Student Council Awareness club along with Jamie, Isabella and Angeline. Despite his awkwardness and nerdy appearance, myriad allergies and lack of expertise in any school subjects, he remains immune to any and all bullying and retains his optimism due to his loving and caring family. He first appears in What I Don't Know Might Hurt Me during the time of year when all clubs have their "membership drives" where they try to recruit more members and the school gives prize money to the club with the most new members, an event deemed as useless by Jamie but which Angeline shows more passion in. The Cusine Club, Video Game Club and the Student Awareness Council all end up with a tie, leaving only Dicky behind to join either club and break the tie. Throughout the book Jamie tries to get him to join the Cusine Club, Isabella tries to get him to join the Video Game Club and Angeline tries to get him to join the Student Awareness Council, the lattermost of which Dicky actually joins.
• Isabella's two older brothers are described as "enemies who live in her house", they often like to bully and harass her, and in turn are framed for Isabella's injuries that she fakes. Sometimes as payback for their bullying, Isabella likes playing cruel pranks on them, such as in Can Adults Become Human? where when one of her brothers stole a chocolate bar she had been saving, she snuck into his bedroom while he slept that night, placed an earthworm in his mouth and taped it shut. In School. Hasn't This Gone Long Enough? it is revealed that one of the brothers was born with a vestigial tail, which was removed and which he keeps in a jar.