When Maxwell Perkins suggested to Rawlings that she write a "boy's book," he mentioned Huckleberry Finn (1884), Treasure Island (1883), and Kim (1901).

Although the genesis of the book is there, The Yearling certainly is a boy's book and a bildungsroman, the most powerful elements in the book come from Rawlings's personal experience and observation. Additionally, this novel shares with some of her other work a vision of the sterling woodsman/farmer harking back to Cooper. Perhaps the most immediate literary precedent was Rawlings's own novel, South Moon Under (1933), which also depicts a boy growing up in the Florida scrub, although the fact — and the anguish — of growing up is not the central issue there.