George Lindsey Lockhart plays a second surrogate for James Thurber (1894-1961), which is also the role John Monroe plays. The story Lockhart recites, "The Shrike and the Chipmunks," is a Thurber story published in The New Yorker on February 18, 1939, and republished in Thurber's 1940 book "Fables for Our Time." Another Thurber fable is "The Stork Who Married a Dumb Wife," which this episode's producers retitled "The Stork Who Hated Babies."
The Manhattanite dedicating an entire issue to George Lindsey Lockhart's new children's book was likely inspired by The New Yorker dedicating its entire November 17, 1962 issue to a magazine-length essay by James Baldwin reporting on the Civil Rights movement. The long-form essay was released in book form in 1963 as The Fire Next Time.