The aesthetic characteristics of children's literature are unique, because the particularity of children's literature readers has a restrictive and decisive role in children's literature.
First, children's aesthetic psychological characteristics
Children are restricted by physical and living conditions, and psychological differentiation has just begun. This makes their aesthetic psychology not only different from adults, but also different from children in childhood and adolescence. Egocentric thinking is very prominent in children's aesthetic psychology. Its characteristics are that subject and object are not divided, subjective emotion and objective understanding are integrated, and the object is always attached to the subject, forming a "self-centered" state of children's aesthetic consciousness. There are four outstanding forms of expression:
1, animism concept
In the eyes of children, all kinds of creatures in the world are alive, and they all have feelings and consciousness like people. As Fan Fajia wrote in Xiao Yu Dian:
Xiaoyudian, you are so brave!
Jumping from such a high sky,
Doesn't it hurt at all?
In children's eyes, everything in the universe is emotional, and "Mao Mao Rain" is no exception. The brave spirit of "Xiao Yu Dian" that is not afraid of pain makes children admire it. The concept of animism makes it easy for children to integrate the aesthetic characteristics of external things into their own hearts and gain great aesthetic pleasure. So in fairy tales, birds can talk, animals can talk, and stones can talk, which is natural and true for children.
2. Artificial concept
In the eyes of young children, there is nothing that no one can do, everything can follow one's inclinations, and everything exists for one's own needs. This is because children are often in a fantasy state, and their thinking is not bound by objective conditions and social customs. Such as Ke Yan's children's song "Take the Train", children can sit on the "small bench" train, "Boom, boom! Hey! " Go over mountains and mountains and travel all over China; Another example is the children's picture story "Long Story". Uncle barber can ride "decorative lights" to fly to the sky to save the eldest child. Children's artificial concept is more obvious in game activities. Piaget said in The Development of Child Psychology: "The game is not that the subject obeys the reality, but that the reality should be assimilated into himself". It can be seen that games often bring people back to nature.
3. Arbitrary logic
In children's minds, shrimp is in the upper reaches of the sky, birds are flying in the water, pigs have wings, and trees have goldfish ... all deformation, increase, decrease and movement are logical. They often combine two unrelated things or phenomena at will according to their own subjective wishes, regardless of whether they are really related or not. Therefore, "subversive songs" in children's songs, such as "the rooster laid a big duck egg and the kitten swam happily", are very popular among children.
4. Pre-causal concept
In the eyes of children, the moon goes with me because it wants to make friends with me; Rabbit's eyes are red, because it loves to cry too much ... this "taken for granted" pre-causal concept can't reflect the objective causal relationship between things. It's just that children are curious and use their limited perception to explain all kinds of things. In many excellent children's literature works, this is often manifested as humor and whimsy.
From the above situation, we can see that children's thinking characteristics are a kind of poetic thinking with great aesthetic feeling, with strong image, identity and vitality, and their "self-centered" consciousness is prominent. Only the content that is closest to their lives, most suitable for their emotions and outstanding external characteristics will become their aesthetic objects. The uniqueness of children's aesthetic psychology is embodied in children's literature, which is full of rich children's interests.