Much of Zimmern's research was done in the British Museum Reading Room, where she associated with suffragists and Fabians such as Edith Bland, Eleanor Marx, and Beatrice Potter.
They form part of the 'realistic adventure' tradition in children's literature, following on from similar works by E. Nesbit and Arthur Ransome.
Jack and the Beanstalk (written by E. Nesbit, illustrated by Matt Tavares) received a 2006 Parents' Choice Awards Gold Award, and was selected to the New York Public Library's "Children's Books 2006: 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing" list.
Brenzett was the setting for E. Nesbit's ghost story Man-size in Marble from the Grim Tales collection of 1893.
He was former Vice President Dan Quayle's communications director at the White House, and a senior public affairs official in the U.S. Senate and federal agencies such as the FDA.
After Nesbit retired in 1968 he moved to El Macero, California, where he served as lecturer of surgery and special assistant to the dean at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine.
The National Book Award citation compares the novel to Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and E. Nesbit's The Story of the Treasure Seekers.
As an underwater fantasy, Baum's The Sea Fairies can be classed with earlier books with similar themes, like Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies (1863), and successors too, like E. Nesbit's Wet Magic (1913).