True Storybook Style houses are relatively rare compared to the more common Period Revival styles and California Bungalows from about the same period.

Storybooks first appeared in Southern California and had a Hollywood fantasy quality. The characteristics of the classic Storybook homes are an exaggerated interpretation of medieval architecture and the appearance of great age accomplished through artificial means. Storybook homes tend to be fanciful in design.

W.W. Dixon designed many of Oakland's Storybook houses. Picardy Drive, also known as Christmas Tree Lane because of the beautiful Christmas lights display during the holiday season, was a street full of houses designed by Dixon for R.C.Hillen, the builder. Dixon also designed homes for MacGreggor the prolific Albany builder.

Storybook houses can be found in Oakland below Mills College in the Normandy Gardens development of the mid 1920s and in North Oakland, at Idora Park between Telegraph and Shattuck. Idora Park was originally the site of an amusement park. Once the park was closed down the site became the location of Storybook homes. Idora park still has the whimsical homes from that era.