Westall won a second Carnegie Medal for "The Scarecrows" (Chatto & Windus, 1981). No one has won three, yet he was not a full-time writer. He retired from teaching only in 1985, and tried dealing antiques before focusing exclusively on his writing. For "Blitzcat" (Bodley Head, 1989) he won the annual Smarties Prize in category 9–11 years. In 1994 the American Library Association named it one of the hundred Best Books for Young Adults of the Last 25 years. He finally won the once-in-a-lifetime Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for "The Kingdom by the Sea" (Methuen, 1990). Both that work and "Gulf" (1992) were highly commended runners-up for the Carnegie Medal. The latter is a story about the home front during the Persian Gulf War.