Mary Downing Hahn Research Paper

“A story comes to you; it isn’t like you choose it. You have no real control.” Mary Downing Hahn has been a part of my childhood ever since I learned how to read. Finding new stories from her in my school’s library brightened my day. From The Doll in the Garden to All the Lovely Bad Ones she has brought out the scary stories for young audiences to enjoy. Mary Elizabeth Downing was born on December 9, 1937, in College Park Maryland. She was the first child of foreigner Kenneth Downing and Anna Sherwood. She was often left with her delusional grandmother in her early years who had terrible hallucinations. Downing Hahn disliked her grandmother who moved in after her birth. In her autobiography, Downing Hahn described her grandmother as “A strange and frightening person. Given to morbid ramblings about sin and death.” She made her early childhood miserable. Because of her grandmother, Hahn was on edge everywhere she went. Making it hard for her to make friends. At the time she was not interested in writing, but rather illustrating. When her mother’s friend gifted her a four-volume set of A.A. Milne’s stories and poems she filled in blank spots of the pages with her own sketches.

She learned to love reading and no one could take a book away from her when she began reading. Her mother often scolded her for not playing with the neighborhood kids. She made a few friends with girls her age. They often talked about the hottest band members and the trend of the year. She met her husband in college and when she became pregnant she decided to drop and take care of her family. Hahn wrote small stories in her free time. Her grandma’s need to tell her about ghosts and death helped with the story making process. She states in her autobiography that you need to be scared of everything in order to write a scary story. When she was forty-four years old Hahn suffered a stroke. Many ideas for books spawned from her