Picture Book About Reading With Dyslexia Wins Carnegie Illustration Medal

Last updated: June 24, 2026

If you have watched a bright child stare at a page while the letters seem to twist and slide, you know how early a young reader starts to decide whether words are for them. A new picture book turns that exact feeling into art, and this week it earned one of the highest honors in children’s publishing. On June 23, illustrator Kate Rolfe won the 2026 Carnegie Medal for Illustration for Wiggling Words, a book drawn from her own experience of reading with dyslexia. The win puts a story about a struggling reader, and the creativity that struggle unlocks, in front of families and libraries around the world.

TL;DR

Illustrator Kate Rolfe won the 2026 Carnegie Medal for Illustration on June 23 for her picture book Wiggling Words (Two Hoots).
The Carnegies are the UK's longest-running children's book awards and are judged by librarians; the illustration prize includes a specially commissioned medal and a 5,000-pound Colin Mears cash award.
Wiggling Words draws on Rolfe's own experience of reading with dyslexia, using typography and contrasting colors to move from a jumble of letters to ordered, creative shapes.
Rolfe, who is dyslexic, autistic, and has ADHD, was first shortlisted in 2025 for her debut Wolf and Bear.
The book has also won the V&A Student Illustrator of the Year award and a World Illustration Award for new talent.

Illustrator Kate Rolfe has won the 2026 Carnegie Medal for Illustration for Wiggling Words, a picture book about reading with dyslexia. Here is what happened and what it means for families of struggling readers.

Common questions

What is Wiggling Words about?

It is a picture book by illustrator Kate Rolfe that shows what reading looks and feels like for someone with dyslexia, following a young character through a jumble of letters that settles into creative, ordered shapes. It is aimed at ages 4 and up.

What award did it win?

The 2026 Carnegie Medal for Illustration, announced June 23. The Carnegies are the UK’s longest-running children’s book awards and are judged by librarians.

My child struggles to read. Does that mean dyslexia?

Not necessarily. A screener flags children who need support and is a starting point, not a diagnosis. If your child might need formal accommodations like an IEP or 504 plan, or you suspect a vision, hearing, or medical cause, a professional evaluation is the route.

How do books like this help a struggling reader?

A warm, capability-first story gives a child a way to see their reading brain as creative rather than broken, which protects the confidence they need to keep practicing. Pair it with short, daily reading practice for the biggest effect.

A picture book about reading with dyslexia won the 2026 Carnegie Medal for Illustration. Kate Rolfe turned her own struggle with letters into a celebration of how differently wired brains read. Tweet Now Follow Learning Success

What happened

The Carnegies, the United Kingdom’s longest-running book awards for children and young people, named their 2026 winners in a livestreamed ceremony on June 23. The illustration medal went to Kate Rolfe for Wiggling Words, published by Two Hoots. The awards are judged by librarians, and the illustration prize carries a specially commissioned medal and a 5,000-pound Colin Mears cash award.

Rolfe drew the book from her own life. She is dyslexic, autistic, and has ADHD, and she has described masking her struggles at school, where her differences went unrecognized. Wiggling Words follows a young character through a jumble of letters that twist into monsters and mountains, then settle into ordered, creative shapes, a journey the judges praised as a celebration of creativity and the universal experience of learning to read.

It is not her first nod from the prize. Rolfe was shortlisted in 2025 for her debut, Wolf and Bear, and Wiggling Words has also won the V&A Student Illustrator of the Year award and a World Illustration Award for new talent.

Author Quote "

All my books are based on my personal experience of life being neurodivergent. But I’ve found that having a brain that works a bit differently is something to be celebrated.

Context worth knowing

This is a UK book award, and the coverage rightly celebrates it. One thing worth keeping in view: a moving picture book is encouragement, not instruction, and a child who finds reading hard is not automatically dyslexic. A screener flags children who need support and is a starting point, not a diagnosis. Strong, explicit reading practice is still what builds the skill.

Why it matters for families

For a parent whose child believes they are bad at reading, a celebrated book that frames a different kind of reading brain as a source of creativity does real work. It hands a struggling reader a mirror that says the difficulty is part of a story, not the end of one. Rolfe has been open that the same wiring she once hid now feeds her art.

“I love the creative element that dyslexia brings to me,” she told Great British Life. “Similar words flow together, and that has been really helpful in my songwriting too. I’m quite poetic and expressive in my language, and I think that is a dyslexic trait.”

That framing matters because how a child sees themselves as a reader shapes whether they keep trying. Reading leans on several systems working together, including sound processing, visual tracking, and working memory, and a child who reads differently is building those skills, not carrying a fixed trait.

Key Takeaways:

Top honor: Kate Rolfe won the 2026 Carnegie Medal for Illustration for Wiggling Words on June 23.

Drawn from life: The book turns Rolfe's own experience of reading with dyslexia into a celebration of creativity.

Why it lands: A librarian-judged medal puts a warm, capability-first reading story onto shelves worldwide.

What it means

Awards like this one shift which stories reach classroom shelves. A medal judged by librarians tends to land books in libraries, and a picture book that treats reading differences with warmth gives teachers and parents a gentle way to open the subject with a young child.

The deeper takeaway sits underneath the headlines. Rolfe’s success is a reminder that the goal was never to fix a child into reading the average way. It is to build the skills that make words click while protecting the belief that the child is capable. Read Wiggling Words with a struggling reader, and the message lands without a lecture: your brain works, and it works in interesting ways.

A child who reads differently is not a problem to be corrected; they are a reader being built, one skill at a time. The villain in this story was never the child and never the parent. It is a system quick to hang a label and slow to develop the brain behind it, the same instinct Rolfe spent years hiding from. If your child is fighting with reading, the Learning Success All Access program turns that struggle into steady, capability-first practice, with a free trial and a personalized Action Plan you keep either way.