As Lenski progressed in her literary and artistic career, her family and home life served as important sources of inspiration for her work. Two of the first books she wrote and illustrated, "Skipping Village" (1927) and "A Little Girl of 1900" (1928), drew upon her childhood in small-town Ohio, which she idealized, describing it in her autobiography as "simple, sincere, and wholesome." The "Mr. Small" series of books was inspired by watching her young son Stephen and his friends play with toy trucks, airplanes and other vehicles and realizing that the children tended to see themselves as the operators of the vehicles, like the eponymous Mr. Small, rather than anthropomorphizing them into characters. She would later base two other picture book series, the "Davy" and "Debbie" books, on her experiences with a grandson and granddaughter. Her first historical novel, "Phebe Fairchild: Her Book", was inspired by living at Greenacres, describing life as it could have been lived at the house in the 1830s.