THE PHYSICAL:

Hair: Straight. Brown. Thick. Just past her shoulders. Worn with bangs; toward the beginning of the series she usually wore pigtails, ponytails, or braids, but later in the series she usually wears it straight down.

Eyes: Slightly wide-set. A little bit larger than average. Deep brown. Dark brown, thin eyebrows.

Nose: A little snub nose, broad across the bottom.

Mouth: Slightly thicker-than-average lips. Teeth are a little crooked, very white, and look too big for her small face.

Skin: Lightly tanned and smooth.

Face: Apple cheeks, dimples, square-ish chin and a healthy sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her ears stick out a little.

Age: By book 5, 9 years old.

Height: A little short for her age.

Weight: A little bit chubby, but for now it counts as “baby fat.”

Body: Arms and legs are thick and short, fingers have little-kid dimples and short fingernails. Her tummy sticks out a little, she has sort of a bouncy, roly-poly look about her.

Ethnicity: Caucasian. Family has lived in the American South for generations. Roots are English, French, and Dutch.

Distinguishing features: Her big brown eyes, dimpled smile, and sweet disposition make her very likeable even without saying a word.

Voice: Ordinary high little-girl voice. Pronounced Southern accent. Giggly laugh.

Gestures: When in motion, she has energetic movements, but when she’s still, she doesn’t fidget. Has a way of staring at conversation partners—with or without a smile—that tells them she’s giving her full attention. Is very free with giving hugs.

Clothing and style: Doesn’t care too much for clothes—her mother still chooses her outfits. Wears a lot of overalls, colored jeans, little-girl skirts, shirts with cartoon characters on them, and tennis shoes or “sensible” shoes with socks. When she wears jewelry it’s usually plastic, but she has a couple silver chain necklaces she wears once in a while. Also likes plastic hair accessories, but isn’t in the mood as of late to dress herself up.

THE PERSONAL:

General mood: Calm, optimistic, and sometimes playful.

Talents and abilities: She has many difficult-to-define talents. Ever since she can remember she’s had limited knowledge of the future—she has accurate premonitions and “just knows” things. In the first book she discovers she can change the path of the pool’s portal. After some training with Adele, she can do different kinds of divinations with pebbles and other manipulatives. Hones that talent some more through her own experiments and learns many different styles of prediction, and becomes more accurate and able to do it on command. This ends up extending to the ability to share images (or language) with other people without saying a word—she can place thoughts in other people’s heads, even though she can’t read minds. And later on, this develops into an ability to attach feelings to the thoughts she projects, which means she has a limited ability to trick people into believing the thoughts she places are their own, enough to make people believe whatever she says. She has a talent for speaking to people and winning them over, a very high intelligence and way with words, and is a decent little volleyball player.

Weaknesses and shortcomings: Sometimes she lacks confidence, which develops into low self-esteem: For instance, she feels too alienated from the other children to think they’d want to play with her, so she doesn’t even try. Sometimes has fleeting feelings of invincibility (later in the books) that negatively affect her decision-making abilities. Sometimes puts too much trust in her divinations. Shy with strangers unless she has a feeling they’re harmless.

Interests: Learning new things, putting together puzzles, flying with Ivy, talking to Adele, practicing with her abilities, and playing with the few friends she does have. Loves volleyball, playing with her baby brother, jumping on her trampoline, singing, playing with nail polish, watching cartoons, and eating cookies.

Pet peeves: When people act alienated after she reveals she knows something she shouldn’t know. When people think she’s too young to do things she knows she can do. The fact that she has to go to school even though she could do the schoolwork in her sleep. Being thought a “troubled child” just because she doesn’t want to play with the other kids.

Phobias: Sometimes she has nightmares but she doesn’t know what they’re about. She fears the parts of the future she can’t see.

Eating habits: Loves her mother’s cooking, particularly mashed potatoes. She also likes fried chicken, corn on the cob, popsicles, cookies (pretty much any kind) and chocolate milk. She generally likes to have three meals a day plus a snack after school and a snack before bed.

Education: She’s in elementary school and is an excellent student. Her school doesn’t really have any good programs to challenge her, so they try to keep her in her box. She’s smart, but doesn’t take more academic studying upon herself—she has other fish to fry.

Language abilities: Though she’s got great verbal skills, Nina does use a lot of technically “bad grammar” phrases—a fair amount of “ain’t got no” and “never gonna” and “think you might could” get into her speech. That’s just a regional thing. Also, in appropriate company, uses a fair amount of mild swear words—she picked them up from her father and likes to use them around Ivy for the reaction she gets. Speaks only English.

Occupation: Just an elementary school child.

Political affiliation: Nina would push for any programs that lift up the downtrodden and help the poor, but she’s of course very idealistic. This trend will continue into her adult life.

Religious beliefs: Nina’s family is not religious, though her grandparents are disappointed that her parents never insisted on the children going to church. However, when they were younger, they used to do mealtime and dinnertime prayers, and Nina still sometimes prays before bed. She believes in a vaguely-defined, infinitely benevolent God and thinks He has a plan, but doesn’t really see what religion has to do with it.

Sexual orientation: As Nina approaches teenagerhood she is going to have . . . a little something more than boys on her mind. But once she has passed some of her hurdles, boys will get her attention. She’s a bit young yet for that. (She does have little innocent “crushes” like most little girls, though.)

Marital status: At age nine, she’d better be single.

Family information: Lives with mother Francis, father Carl, and brothers Jeremy and Erik in North Carolina. Largely cared for by her mother, who’s open-minded and winsome like her daughter. She takes after her father in looks, but otherwise they’re very different—Carl is strict and a bit overprotective. Older brother Jeremy is into soccer and pays little attention to his sister, while younger brother Erik is just a baby and captures a lot of his sister’s attention. Has a dog named Cricket.

Friend information: Her closest friend is Adele, but she thinks of her more like family. She’s also very close to Ivy, and secondarily Bailey, Tab, and Thursday. (She and Bailey didn’t get along at first, but they like each other after some events in Book 2, and she’s not as friendly with Thursday as she is with Tab.) As one of the Handprints members, she has a close relationship with all of them (and is getting to really be friendly with Skyler). At school, Nina has only a few acquaintances, hardly anyone she’d ever bring home to play. Once had a pal named Darlene who she brought to the house, but Darlene moved on to middle school (she’s a bit older) and Nina didn’t keep in touch.

Other information: Nina has a way of really “lighting up” when she’s excited or happy—many have commented on the way her face seems to glow, with her eyes so bright they look like flashlights. Trusts easily. Dreams vividly.

THE STORY:

Ever since she can remember, Nina believed she was different from other kids. She didn’t mind so much, but was always feeling a little lonely. She had a very strong belief that sometime in the indeterminate future, someone was going to come and show her a secret; she had a recurring dream that a special person from “somewhere else” was going to arrive and change her life, give her purpose.

When Ivy showed up on her school playground when Nina was seven, she knew exactly who she was (though she didn’t know ahead of time what she would look like or what their relationship would involve). It surprised Ivy that Nina treated her like she knew her, but Nina just felt like her destiny was being fulfilled and she wanted to get started immediately on finding out what her new life would be like. She brought Ivy home to meet her family.

Through a series of difficult events, Ivy won Nina’s family’s trust, and stayed around for some good times before getting permission to take Nina to “the house.” There Nina met Adele, and again she knew immediately that this person was going to change her life. She was excited to find this amazing other reality on the other side of her lake, and she became almost obsessed with going there whenever she could.

Ivy’s behavior got them both in trouble and they had a run-in with local police, which eventually involved North Carolina law enforcement officers making their way into the house. Through this experience, Nina found out she was able to open and close the pool’s gate, and Adele realized her suspicion that this would be a person she could train was correct. Ivy became jealous and ended up backing off of their relationship, focusing more on bonding with Bailey and on her own life, which depressed Nina because she was so excited about learning about her abilities and she didn’t want her progression to cause Ivy to distance herself.

After some in-depth talks and misinterpretations, each of them got their head on straight, and they were better friends than ever. While Ivy was busy with many huge events in her own story line, Nina experimented and learned and trained, and though she’s not on Adele’s level yet she’s a pretty good junior priestess. Her growth in that area disturbs her family and makes her feel even more separate from other kids, so she starts to pull away from the “human” world in favor of absorbing the world of Ivy’s house. When Ivy comes up with her Handprints group idea, Nina wholeheartedly agrees that it will be a good idea, especially since she’s now even alienating other people at the house with her new ability to make other people believe her—Ivy fears that she might do that to her, and Nina won’t promise not to because she thinks she might have to someday.

Focused on the group’s mission of feeling comfortable in society in spite of having strange abilities, Nina acts as a recruiter and an advice-giver, locating likely prospects to draw into the group and helping to make them feel welcome. She has a humbling experience during a random rescue mission (which, incidentally, affects Ivy the opposite way: She becomes obsessed with helping people for a while), and when she sees a disturbing image in one of her visions, she has to make some difficult choices about the group’s actions. Nina is in for a difficult life for the next few years, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

FAVORITE NINA QUOTES:

“You’re my friend from over the rainbow, right?” –Book 1, chapter 3

“I knew there had to be magic for me somewhere.” –Book 1, chapter 3

“Ivy ain’t from around here, she didn’t know no better.” –Book 1, chapter 3

“I’d spend all day with you if I could, Ivy.” –Book 1, chapter 8

“If I was you, I’d feel like somebody was passin’ me around like a bug in a jar.” –Book 1, chapter 8

“I do have sharp eyes. I always eat my carrots.” –Book 1, chapter 10

“I don’t think I’ll ever get bored here.” –Book 1, chapter 11

“I wish I didn’t have to come home.” –Book 1, chapter 12

“You couldn’t ’ave been hatched, Ivy. People don’t get hatched. They get born. Besides . . . you got a belly button.” –Book 2, chapter 2

“I’m a real good judge of character.” . . . “Well, that’s what Mom says when she means I know good people from bad people.” –Book 2, chapter 14

“It seems like I’m gettin’ farther and farther away . . . but at the same time, I’m gettin’ closer to you guys. I like it, but it scares me, because . . . you guys ain’t the same as nobody, and now I’m startin’ to be the same.” –Book 2, chapter 30

“Mama said that the doctor said throwin’ up is normal for pregnant ladies. So she don’t got the flu after all.” –Book 3, chapter 8

“But this ain’t my only family, Ivy. I got a whole ’nother one at home.” –Book 3, chapter 8

“Recess sucks.” –Book 4, chapter 19

“Nothin’ in the world is as much fun as flyin’.” –Book 4, chapter 19

“There’s a lot on your mind, ain’t there? Well, how ’bout tellin’ me all about it? I’m a good listener.” –Book 4, chapter 26

“Ask Adele. I’m not so great at this oracle thing yet, ya know.” –Book 4, chapter 26

“I already told you Ivy is like my family! She might not look like me or be from the same place but she understands me like a sister! And I don’t have a sister. You let me have her!” –Book 4, chapter 26

“I think if I had your power I’d never get bored.” –Book 4, chapter 28

“I see the video section labeled ‘adult’ but I know what’s in there: A bunch of porno movies. And if you ask me, watchin’ those things ain’t so mature.” –Book 4, chapter 28

“We both know I’m wise beyond my years, Ivy.” –Book 4, chapter 28