Dora the Explorer is now a born-and-bred New Yorker from Queens.
One of the city’s highest-paid child models, Fatima Ptacek, 11, has been tapped to provide the new bubbly voice of Dora Marquez, the adventurous, bilingual 8-year-old who is the main character of the international cartoon sensation.
Ptacek — the daughter of a retired NYPD detective and a former accountant — said she scored the gig just by being her outgoing self.
“I don’t do a special voice for Dora,” said Ptacek, whose Norwegian-American dad is from Queens and whose mom was born in Ecuador.
“I just do me. I don’t change my voice at all — I’m just a little more energetic. I’m fluent in English and Spanish, and so is Dora.”
The seventh season of the Nickelodeon show, which has raked in an estimated $1 billion since its 2000 debut, premieres on Jan. 30.
Ptacek can already be heard on “Dora” toys, games and videos, according to her dad.
The cast records the show at a Manhattan sound studio, where the actors read from scripts and then do audio touch-ups where they match their voices to the animation.
“I can identify with Dora; she’s super-determined to get to her exploring,” said the ambitious Ptacek. “I’m very independent. I’m not going to have a boyfriend until I’m 20. I have my priorities down.
“My dad says I’m not allowed to date until I’m 35,” she added. “I say, ‘Papi, you’re stretching it.’ ”
The sixth-grader, who attends public school in Sunnyside, was discovered in 2006 at an open call by the Wilhelmina modeling agency. Since then, she’s appeared in more than 50 television commercials and scored bit parts on the big and small screens, including “Sesame Street” and “Anything’s Possible,” a film to be released later this year.
Ptacek said she went in blind for the Nickelodeon audition last year.
“I was told it was a secret project, and I knew nothing about it,” she said. “While I was reading lines I realized it was for Dora, because I recognized them from episodes I had seen.”
Ptacek, who signed a three-year contract with Nickelodeon, said her friends at school now call her “Dora.” “I’m still getting used to it,” she said. “It’s odd.”