When the first edition of John Peterson’s The Littles hit the market in 1967, the landscape of children’s literature was on an evolutionary trajectory as shaped by the Golden Age of Children’s Literature that occupied the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The Littles’s clearest literary influence comes from English author Mary Norton’s 1952 children’s novel, The Borrowers, which also features a family of tiny people who secretly inhabit the walls of a big family’s home. Like the Littles, the Clock family from The Borrowers also relies on borrowing or otherwise salvaging items from the larger host family they live with. The Borrowers went on to have four published sequels, the latest of which hit shelves in 1982, 21 years after the previous installment in 1961 and in the wake of the success of The Littles series.

The Littles debuted to critical acclaim, and two sequels were published the following year in 1968: The Littles to the Rescue and The Littles Take a Trip. John Peterson went on to write 15 independent Littles titles, with his final Littles novel releasing in 2003, one year after his death. In the 1980s, other authors took on the expansion of the Littles’ literary universe alongside an animated television adaptation produced by media company DIC Entertainment.