Mary Huiskamp Calhoun Wilkins

Mary Huiskamp Calhoun Wilkins. . , Mary Huiskamp was born August 3rd, 1926 in Keokuk, Iowa. Discovering the delights of the library, by the age of 7 she knew she wanted to be a writer. , Huiskamp grew up in a big brick house, built by her great grandfather, on a hill above the Mississippi River, located at 202 Blondeau Street. Her experiences in that house and its many rooms and gardens, dumb waiter and talking tube greatly influenced the writer she would become., As a child, I would “romantically” sit under a gooseberry bush to compose a fairytale, burying the installments in a White Owl cigar box under the bush. I still have that box. , Keokuk and the river was stimulating to the imagination and, of course I wanted to float down river on a raft, but instead, as a teenager, Huiskamp worked summers at the Keokuk Public Library in the children’s section and then went on to the University of Iowa. , It was during a creative writing course at Iowa that she concluded she had no talent for fiction and went on to major in journalism. , Her first job out of college was as a writer for the World-Herald, a newspaper in Omaha, Nebraska where she met and married James Frank Calhoun, a reporter-photographer. When children Michael and Gregory were born, Huiskamp gave up newspaper work to be with them. Soon she was telling them story after story, writing them down and submitting them for publication and after a period of rejection slips the stories began to sell to children’s magazines. , In 1957, out of nostalgia for the river, she wrote her first children’s book, Making the Mississippi Shout. She based many of her books on experiences she had in Keokuk, most notably the series for which she is best known, the Katie John books. While the books are not biographical, many of the incidents are based on things I did as a girl, feelings and problems I had, so I suppose Katie John has a good deal of me in her. , Frank Calhoun died in 1961. Mary Huiskamp Calhoun later married, Leon Wilkins, a friend from her High School days in Keokuk.