It won a Sequoyah Book Award in 1967. The paperback version was selected as one of the "Best in the Field" published during the previous 16 months in a 1968 "New York Times" article. In 1995, Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies claimed that 2.5 million copies of the book had been sold; however, the book did not appear on a 2001 "Publishers Weekly" list of "hardcovers that have sold 750,000 copies and paperbacks that have topped the one million copy mark."