Dickinson's first two mysteries both won the Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger, "Skin Deep" in 1968 and "A Pride of Heroes" in 1969. He was at least as successful with his children's books. He won the 1977 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for "The Blue Hawk", an award judged by British children's writers, which no author may win twice. For "Tulku" (1979) he won both the Whitbread Children's Book Award and finally the Carnegie Medal after being a commended runner-up three times. He won the Carnegie again next year for "City of Gold". In 1982 he was named to the International Board of Books for Young People Honor List for "Tulku", and "The Iron Lion" was selected one of New York Times Notable Books. "Eva" (1988) was a runner-up for both the Carnegie (highly commended) and the Horn Book Award. In 2008 it won the Phoenix Award from the Children's Literature Association as the best English-language children's book that did not a major award when it was originally published twenty years earlier. Dickinson and "The Seventh Raven" (1981) had won the same award in 2001.