[2] The British Library Association awarded Dickinson his second Carnegie Medal recognising the year's outstanding children's book by a British subject[2][a] and highly commended Foreman for the companion Kate Greenaway Medal.

[3][b] City of Gold is a "radical" retelling of Bible stories, according to the retrospective online Carnegie Medal citation.

Dickinson described the origin and development of particular story books to the Children's Literature Association when he received the retrospective Phoenix Award for Eva in 2008.

[4] His editor Joanna Goldsworthy at Gollancz made the request, he recalls, for a series of retellings illustrated by Foreman in which fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen and folk tales collected by the Brothers Grimm had already been done.

Panelist Vivian Griffiths responded that popularity with children was not a criterion; the point was literary merit.