What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge. What Katy Did is an 1872 children's book written by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey under her pen name Susan Coolidge. It follows the adventures of a twelve-year-old American girl, Katy Carr, and her family who live in the fictional lakeside Ohio town of Burnet in the 1860s. Katy is a tall untidy tomboy, forever getting into scrapes but wishing to be beautiful and beloved. 12-year-old Katy Carr lives with her widowed father and her two brothers and three sisters in Burnet, a small midwestern town. Her father is a very busy doctor who works long hours; the children are mostly in the care of his sister Aunt Izzie, who is very particular and something of a scold. Bright, headstrong Katy can hardly avoid getting into mischief almost daily under these circumstances, but she is unfailingly remorseful afterward. She dreams of someday doing something "grand" with her life: painting famous pictures, saving the lives of drowning people, or leading a crusade on a white horse. She also wants to be "beautiful, of course, and good if I can." When her mother died four years earlier, Katy promised to be a little mother to her siblings: in practice, she is the kind of big sister who is sometimes impatient or cross with them, but leads them into all sorts of exciting adventures.