According to A.M. Gorky, children's literature is an independent branch of all literature as a whole. Despite the similarity and unity of the tasks and principles of children's and adult literature, children's literature has special features that are unique to it, which allow us to raise the question of the specifics of this type of literature. This question has been highly controversial for a long time. There were two main points of view postulating opposite positions: firstly, that children's literature is only an educational tool, and secondly, that there is no specificity of children's literature as such. Alekseeva M.I. Editing Children's Literature: A Methodological Guide for Students. // http://www.detlitlab.ru/?cat=8&article=31 (Date of access: 11/22/12). The first approach is reflected in the fact that literature for children, which appeared in Russia in the 13th century and became actively disseminated in the 18th century, was mainly fairy tales, including borrowed ones, as well as works originally intended for adults, and was mainly didactic in nature, while it was quite difficult for a child to perceive. Children's literature / Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia // http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%E5%F2%F1%EA%E0%FF_%EB%E8%F2%E5%F0%E0%F2% F3%F0%E0 (Date of access: 11/22/12.)

As it turned out later, both approaches turned out to be fundamentally wrong. Children's literature should be, first of all, a carrier of artistic value, he wrote back in the 19th century. V.G. Belinsky, touching on this problem in his writings. Alekseeva M.I. Editing of children's literature: Methodological guide for students.// http://www.detlitlab.ru/?cat=8&article=31 (Date of access: 11/22/12). In the twentieth century, we can observe the active development of his idea: the authors are becoming more professional, multifaceted, educated; they are focused specifically on working with young readers.

The main feature of children's literature is that the younger the reader, the more specific factors of his perception must be taken into account when creating and editing a book (visibility, simplicity, brevity), and the older he gets, the wider the subject matter of works can become with a gradual complication of content. Regarding the subject, the researcher of children's literature A.S. Makarenko: “It is impossible to indicate any serious and fundamental restrictions on children's topics” Makarenko AS On children's literature and children's reading. - M., 1955. - S. 95., but at the same time it is always necessary to remember that the child, due to the lack of sufficient life experience, is not able to understand, comprehend the texts of "adult" works with deep philosophical overtones or describing those events and experiences that the child has not yet experienced.

This does not mean that in children's books the author is silent about the feelings of the hero: he tries to write about them in a form accessible to the young reader. The task of the editor in this case is to eliminate abstract, abstract concepts, to make the text more figurative, lively, subjective and vivid.

The main theme, of course, remains the life of their peers closest to children and adolescents: therefore, stories about childhood, including autobiographical ones, are very popular (L. N. Tolstoy, A. M. Gorky, A. N. Tolstoy, A. P. Gaidar, L. Kassil, M. Twain and others).

The writer who, when creating certain works, counted specifically on children, is L.N. Tolstoy: most of his stories and stories meet the above requirements of fascination, imagery, accessibility. The writer added interesting details and "entertainment techniques" that enliven the story. An example of such means is an unexpected ending, like the episode with the doll in the story "Fire Dogs" See Alekseeva, M.I. Editing of Children's Literature: A Methodological Guide for Students.

Thus, the main thing in a children's book, according to many editors, scientists and writers, is a form that is attractive to the child. The educational component, morality, of course, as in any other literature, should be present, but without occupying a dominant position. First of all, the purpose of such literature is to awaken any associations in the child, fill his mind with vivid images, form an attitude towards positive and negative characters and actions on a subconscious level, provide a set of templates so that the child can be guided by the actions and decisions of book characters in a similar life situation; develop fantasy through a captivating plot, enrich vocabulary, and ultimately instill a love for adult, serious, more philosophical literature.

Marshak himself wrote beautifully about what children's books should be like: “If the book has a clear and complete plot, if the author is not an indifferent registrar of events, but a supporter of some heroes of the story and an enemy of others, if the book has rhythmic movement, and not dry rational consistency, if the moral conclusion from the book is not a free application, but a natural consequence of the whole course of events, and even if, in addition to all this, the book can be played out in your imagination like a play, or turned into an endless epic, inventing more and more sequels for it , - this means that the book is written in a real children's language ”Marshak S. Sobr. op. T. 6. M., 1971. S. 20 ..

So, having studied here what aspects should be taken into account when creating and editing children's literature, in the following chapters we will move on to a direct consideration of how S.Ya. Marshak, as an editor, put these ideas and principles into practice.

The subject of children's literature can be considered knowledge and ideas about the surrounding reality, depicted in a form accessible to children's perception. Knowledge about the world reflected in children's literature should be of a special nature and take into account the specifics of the reader. Childhood is a period in which a personality is formed and on which the future fate of a person largely depends. In childhood, the foundations of the future are formed. At the same time, it is a natural, extremely important and absolutely independent part of life. This is both preparation for adulthood and a time full of impressions, bright, colorful events, when a person discovers the world for himself. His character is formed, the structure of spiritual values ​​is created, which determine the inner image of the personality.

In order for a child to willingly turn to a book, its content must captivate the reader. Therefore, when creating a children's work, it is necessary to take into account the specifics of the interest of children, which affects the subject of content. In addition, it should be borne in mind that the child is constantly developing under the influence of external conditions and these conditions affect the formation of personality. And therefore, when publishing children's literature, it is necessary to take into account the educational effect of the publication.

Thus, the subject of children's literature implies the educational and educational impact of the book on the reader.

But even this is not enough to characterize the subject matter of the content of children's literature. The psychology of children is different from the psychology of adults. Children, especially preschoolers, believe in the inviolability and openness of the world, in kindness and justice, in the fact that positive, good things that cause the approval of adults are correct and should exist in exactly the state that is most preferable for their understanding and perception.

This observation allows us to identify another important aspect of the subject area of ​​literature for children. As a rule, works of children's literature are optimistic, in them good triumphs over evil, truth triumphs over lies.

We emphasize, by the way, that a person in childhood is closely connected with the text. Children communicate with adults and with each other primarily through texts. Acquaintance with the outside world is also carried out through the text - after all, a child learns a lot not from his own experience, but from the explanations that others tell him, i.e. from oral texts. Apparently, this is why the book is organic for children's perception. Behind it for the child is, as it were, a conversation with adults, because at first the book is read by parents or older brothers or sisters. This consideration must be kept in mind when the question arises of the effect of a book on the reader. Due to the constant, active interest of children in the environment, the impact of the content of the book on the child can be quite strong, and the perception of the content of the book can be reliable and natural.

What can become the basis of the content of children's literature? Obviously, almost any phenomenon, any object of reality. However, the interpretation of events, the actions of people, the properties of animals must acquire a special sound - a sound determined by the subject area of ​​children's literature.

A hundred thousand “hows”, millions of “whys” are ready to be asked by a small person. And the content of the book is intended to reveal, show, explain those facts that fall into the field of view of the child. Draw his attention to those that do not fall. Literature for children is devoted to history and modernity, nature and human society, culture, sciences, and arts. Therefore, the subject of children's literature is characterized by a wealth of problem-thematic composition. Literally all aspects of human life and activity are reflected in literature.

However, we must not forget that the thematic focus reflects the cognitive and educational potential of literature for children. Moreover, its subject is determined by the social order, the educational ideals of society. The subject reflects various aspects of the life of society, moral positions, the prevailing social ideal, which affects the nature of the subject of literature for children.

In addition, the specific interests of the children's audience are taken into account, and in the content, priority is given to childhood, the period of growth and maturation of children, and the tasks that they face. Therefore, the subject of children's literature covers the life of the school, summer holidays, acquaintance with the city and country, episodes from the life of historical heroes, scientists, cultural and art figures.

But the subject matter and the selection of the factual material of the works do not exhaust the general characterization of the content. An important indicator of the subject area of ​​children's literature is the problems of works. It is clear, therefore, that the subject of children's literature is a social, historical, developing quality.

In the process of formation, children's literature has deepened significantly, and modern literature is attracted by the eternal questions of mankind: how a person develops, from what and to what a person and humanity go. In this literature, childhood is seen as the beginning of a person's journey into the future.

The subject of literature for children is realized by the subject area of ​​publications, which will be discussed in detail below.

Children's literature is singled out as an independent complex on the basis of the reader's address, and the category of the reader's address is organically linked with the category of the intended purpose of the work of literature.

Topic 1. The specifics of children's literature. Genres of children's literature

The main criterion that makes it possible to isolate children's literature from "literature in general" is the "category of the child reader." Guided by this criterion, literary critics distinguish three classes of works:

1) directly addressed to children;

2) included in the circle of children's reading (not created specifically for children, but found their response and interest);

3) composed by the children themselves (or, in other words, "children's literary creativity").

The first of these groups is most often meant by the words "children's literature" - literature created in dialogue with an imaginary (and often quite real) child, "tuned" to the children's worldview. However, the criteria for selecting such literature can not always be clearly identified. Among the main ones:

a) publication of a work in a children's publication (magazine, book marked "for children", etc.) during his lifetime and with the knowledge of the writer;

b) dedication to the child;

c) the presence in the text of the work of appeals to a young reader.

However, such criteria will not always be the basis for singling out children's literature (for example, addressing a child can only be a device, dedication can be done “for the future”, etc.).

AT history of children's literature usually the same periods and trends are distinguished as in the general literary process. But the imprint on the development of children's literature is left, on the one hand, by the pedagogical ideas of a particular period (and, more broadly, by the attitude towards children), and on the other hand, by the demands of the little and young readers themselves, which also change historically.

It can be said that in most cases (though not always) children's literature is more conservative than adult literature. This is explained by its specific main function, which goes beyond the scope of artistic creativity: the formation in the child of a primary holistic figurative representation of the world (initially, this function was carried out through folklore works). Being so closely connected with pedagogy, children's literature, it would seem, is somewhat limited in the field of artistic search, which is why it often "lags behind" "adult" literature or does not completely follow its path. But, on the other hand, children's literature cannot be called artistically inferior. K. Chukovsky insisted that a children's work should have the highest artistic "standard" and be perceived as an aesthetic value by both children and adults.

In fact, children's literature is a special way of artistic reflection of the world (the question of the status of children's literature was open for quite a long time; in the USSR in the 1970s, a discussion on this topic was held on the pages of the Children's Literature magazine). Functionally and genetically, it is connected with folklore, with its playful and mythological components, which are preserved even in literary and author's works. The world of a children's work, as a rule, is anthropocentric, and in the center of it is a child (or another hero with whom a young reader can identify himself).

Using the Jungian classification of archetypes, we can say that the mythologeme of the Divine Child becomes paramount in the artistic worldview of almost any children's work. The main function of such a hero is to “be a miracle” or to be a witness to a miracle, or even to perform miracles on his own. The mind of a child, and the wisdom he suddenly shows, and just a good deed can be perceived as a miracle. This mythologeme also entails a number of motifs that are repeated again and again in children's literature (the mysterious or unusual origin of the hero or his orphanhood, the increase in the scale of his image - up to external features; the child's ability to perceive what adults do not see; the presence of a magical patron, etc.).

As a variant of the mythologeme of the Divine Child, its opposite can be considered - a “non-divine” mischievous child who in every possible way violates the norms of the “adult” world and is subjected to censure, ridicule and even curses for this (such, for example, are the heroes of the edifying “horror stories” of the 19th century about Styopka-Rastrepka ).

Another variety of children's images, also originating in mythological subjects, is the “sacrificial child” (for example, in the biblical story about the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham); such images received special development in Soviet children's literature. By the way, the first child image in Russian literature belongs to this type - Prince Gleb from The Tale of Boris and Gleb (mid-11th century). The author even deliberately underestimated the age of the hero in order to “exaggerate” his holiness (in fact, at the time of the murder, Gleb was no longer a child).

Another mythology of no small importance for children's literature is the idea of ​​paradise, embodied in the images of a garden, a wonderful island, a distant country, etc. For “adult” Russian writers, since the end of the 18th century, the world of childhood has become a possible embodiment of this mythologeme - a wonderful time when everything that exists can be perceived as paradise. The content of children's works inevitably correlates with the psychology of the child (otherwise the work simply will not be accepted or even harm the child). According to the observations of researchers, “children crave a happy ending”, they need a sense of harmony, which is also reflected in building a picture of the world in works for children. The child demands "truthfulness" even in fairy-tale fiction (so that everything is "like in life").

Researchers of children's literature note the proximity of children's literature to mass literature, which is primarily manifested in the formation of genre canons. There were even attempts to create "instructions" for writing children's works of various genres - just as, by the way, such instructions are quite feasible for creating ladies' novels, police detective stories, mystical thrillers, etc. - genres canonized to an even greater extent than "children's". Close to children's and mass literature and artistic means, drawn by one and the other from folklore, popular popular prints (according to one of the researchers, Chukovsky's "Fly Tsokotuha" is ... nothing more than a "tabloid" novel, arranged in verse and supplied with popular prints ") . Another feature of children's works - created for children by adults - is the presence in them of two plans - "adult" and "children's", which "resonate, forming a dialogic unity within the text."

Each group of genres of children's literature has its own artistic features. Prose genres are transformed not only under the influence of fairy tales. Large epic genres of historical and moral-social themes are influenced by the classic story about childhood (the so-called “school story”, etc.). Stories and short stories for children are considered “short” forms, they are characterized by clearly drawn characters, a clear main idea developed in a simple plot with a tense-sharp conflict. Dramaturgy for children practically does not know tragedy, since the child’s consciousness rejects the sad outcomes of conflicts with the death of a positive hero, and even “really” presented on stage. Here, too, the influence of fairy tales is enormous. Finally, children's poetry and lyrical epic genres, firstly, gravitate towards folklore, and in addition, they also have a number of canonical features recorded by K. Chukovsky. Children's poems, according to K. Chukovsky, necessarily "should be graphic", that is, they can easily be transformed into a picture; they should have a quick change of images, complemented by a flexible change in rhythm (as for rhythm and meter, Chukovsky noted in the book “From Two to Five” that the chorea predominates in the work of the children themselves). An important requirement is "musicality" (first of all, this term means the absence of clusters of consonant sounds that are inconvenient for pronunciation). For children's poems, adjacent rhymes are preferred, while the rhyming words "should bear the greatest weight of meaning"; "each verse must be a complete syntactic whole." Children's poems, according to Chukovsky, should not be overloaded with epithets: the child is more interested in action than description. The playful presentation of poetry is recognized as the best, including the play of sounds. Finally, K. Chukovsky urged children's poets to listen to folk children's songs and to the poetry of the children themselves.

Speaking of a children's book, one should not forget about such an important part of it (no longer literary, but in this case practically inseparable from it) as illustrations. A children's book is, in fact, a syncretic unity of picture and text, and in illustrating children's books there have also been and are their own trends associated with both the development of fine arts and literature.

LECTURES ON CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

SECTION 1. LITERATURE AS A BASIS FOR SPIRITUAL AND MORAL DEVELOPMENT OF A PERSON.

TOPICS 1.1. - 1.2. SPECIFICITY OF CHILDREN'S LITERATURE: ARTISTIC AND PEDAGOGICAL COMPONENTS. READING CIRCLE OF PRESCHOOL CHILDREN.

Literature is an indispensable means of aesthetic education of a preschool child. Children's literature is a complex of works created specifically for children, taking into account the psychophysiological characteristics of their development. There is an opinion among readers that children's literature is those works that a person reads three times in his life: as a child, becoming a parent and acquiring the status of a grandmother or grandfather.

Through children's literature, the emotional preschooler is carried out, the development of all his cognitive processes and abilities. Against the background of the ever-increasing influence of television and computer technologies on a small person, the importance of literature and children's reading is growing. The aesthetic education of a child by means of literature involves the development of his artistic needs, emotions and feelings. It is during the preschool period that the child develops the prerequisites for the development of literary and artistic abilities.

In the perception of the world by a preschooler, his characteristic tendency is manifested to enliven the environment, to give character, desires even to inanimate objects. That is why he is so fascinated by the world of art. For a preschooler who has just begun to discover the world of a work of art, everything in it is new and unusual. He is a pioneer, and his perception is bright and emotional. The feeling of a pioneer, which is very important for creativity, is also manifested in the assimilation and use of artistic speech forms: verse (sound, rhythm, rhyme); lyrical-epic forms; prose, etc.

Introducing the child to the best examples of children's literature contributes to the comprehensive and harmonious development of the individual. The educator plays the leading role in introducing the child to literature in the conditions of preschool education. Therefore, knowledge of children's literature is necessary for future teachers.

One of the features of children's literature is the unity of literary and pedagogical principles. Both writers and researchers, speaking about the pedagogical, didactic essence of children's literature, pointed to the specifics of the text of a children's work, where there is a constant interchange of aesthetics and didactics.

The ability to correctly form a circle of children's reading (KCH) is the basis of the professional activity of a speech therapist. The CDN depends on the age of the reader, his passions and preferences, on the state and level of development of the literature itself, on the state of the collections of public and family libraries. Psychological, pedagogical, literary, historical and literary approaches or principles are the starting points for the formation of the KCH.

As you know, fiction plays a huge role in the upbringing and education of children. M. Gorky also noted the role of art in shaping a person’s attitude to various phenomena of reality: “All art, consciously or unconsciously, aims to awaken certain feelings in a person, to cultivate in him this or that attitude to a given phenomenon of life.”

B.M. Teplov reveals the psychological essence of the educational impact of art (including fiction) as follows: “The educational value of works of art lies in the fact that they make it possible to enter “inside life”, to experience a piece of life reflected in the light of a certain worldview . And the most important thing is that in the process of this experience certain attitudes and moral assessments are created, which have an incomparably greater coercive force than assessments that are simply communicated or assimilated.

This significance of art is especially great in the formation of feelings and relationships in children. But in order for a work of art to fulfill its educational role, it must be appropriately perceived. Therefore, the study of the problem of perception of literary works is of undoubted interest.

There are a number of studies on this problem in the Russian psychological literature. Valuable material is contained in the works of O.I. Nikiforova, in which general questions of the psychology of perception of works of fiction are considered. The analysis of the understanding of the psychology of a literary character by children of different ages is the subject of research by T.V. Rubtsova, B.D. Praisman and O.E. Svertyuk. In the study by L.S. Slavina, E.A. Bondarenko, M.S. Klevchenya, the question of the influence of the characteristics of children of the corresponding age on their attitude to literary characters is considered.

A review of these and other psychological studies that examine the psychology of the perception of fiction by children of different ages shows that the subject of study was mainly questions of children's understanding of a literary work and its characters. However, the perception of a work of art in its essence is not a purely cognitive act. A full perception of a work of art is not limited to understanding it. It is a complex process, which certainly includes the emergence of one or another relationship, both to the work itself and to the reality that is depicted in it.

Let us consider in more detail the process of perception of fiction. The perception of fiction is the result of a psychological mechanism based on physiological processes. The perception of fiction is holistic and at the same time extremely difficult. Usually it proceeds directly, and only in difficult cases does one or another operation of the imagination or mental action become conscious. Therefore, this process seems to us simple. It distinguishes the following aspects: direct perception of the work (recreation of its images and their experience), understanding of the ideological content, aesthetic evaluation and the influence of literature on people as a consequence of the perception of works.

All these aspects are interconnected, but at the same time their mechanisms differ from each other. Thus, the understanding of the ideological content depends on the reconstruction of the images of the work, but the mechanisms of these processes are opposite. The whole process of perception of literary works at all its stages is of an aesthetic, evaluative nature, but the evaluative evaluation mechanism has specific features. The influence of fiction on people is the result of all the mentioned processes, but, in addition, it is determined by other factors as well.

There are three stages in the process of perception of fiction:

1) direct perception, i.e. recreating the experience of the images of the work. At this stage, the leading process is the imagination. With direct perception when reading a work, thought processes take place, but they must be subordinated to the reconstruction of images and not suppress the emotionality of the perception of the work. The fact is that the words of the text have a conceptual meaning and figurative content.

When reading, listening to a work, certain images, especially when reading intermittently, usually cause certain thoughts in the child - such thoughts are natural and do not kill the emotionality of perception.

2) understanding the ideological content of the work. A complete understanding of the idea is possible only when reading the entire work as a whole. At this stage, when perceiving a work, thinking becomes the leading one, but since it operates with what was emotionally experienced, it does not kill the emotionality of perception, but deepens it.

3) the influence of fiction on the child's personality as a result of the perception of works.

The process of cognition, whether it goes “from living contemplation to abstract thinking and from it to practice” or “by ascending from the abstract to the concrete”, is impossible without representations, which are an intermediate stage of cognition, a link in the dialectical transition from the sensory level to the rational and vice versa .

Any concept as an element of thinking is formed on the basis of ideas. The formation of ideas about the surrounding reality precedes the formation of a worldview. Answering questions, we are based on more or less realistic ideas and images about the object or phenomenon being studied. Therefore, we can say that representations are the basis of all meaning. Representations are among secondary images that, unlike the primary ones (sensation and perception), arise in the mind in the absence of direct stimuli, which brings them closer to the images of memory, imagination and visual-figurative thinking.

Usually under performance understand the mental process of reflecting objects and phenomena of the surrounding reality in the form of generalized visual images, and under imagination- a mental process that consists in creating new images by processing the material of perceptions and ideas obtained in previous experience.

The product of the view is representation image, or a secondary sensually visual image of objects and phenomena, stored and reproduced in the mind without a direct impact of the objects themselves on the senses. Representations are in a complex relationship with other mental processes. Representation is related to sensation and perception by the figurative, visual form of their existence. But sensation and perception always precede representation, which cannot arise from scratch. Representation is precisely the result of a generalization of a number of essential features of an object.

Views often act as references. This circumstance brings them closer to the processes of identification. Identification implies the presence of at least two objects - real, perceived and reference. There is no such duality in representations. Representations are often called memory images, because in both cases there is a reproduction of a person's past experience. Both are secondary images that arise without reliance on direct perception. But the view lacks the processes of remembering and saving. In the process of remembering, a person is always aware of the connection with the past, while in the representation, in addition to the past, the present and the future can be reflected.

Imagination images are very close to representations. Imagination, like representation, uses material previously received by perception and stored by memory. Imagination is a creative process that develops over time, in which you can often trace the storyline. In representation, the object is more static: it is either motionless, or a limited number of manipulative operations are performed with it. Representation acts as a mechanism for recreating the imagination. But besides it, there are also various forms of creative imagination that are not reducible to representation.

The degree of control of a person's side over the images of his imagination varies greatly. Therefore, distinguish between imagination arbitrary and involuntary. According to the methods of creating images, there are also recreating and creative imagination.

The content of the direct perception of a literary work, in addition to representation, includes emotional and aesthetic experiences, as well as thoughts that arise about the perceived. The perception of fiction at all stages of reading a work is always holistic, despite the fact that the work itself is divided into elements arranged sequentially in time.

Another essential feature of the perception of fiction is the emotional-volitional experiences of children. There are three main types:

1) internal volitional actions and experiences for the heroes of a literary work. As a result of such assistance and empathy with the hero, the child comprehends the inner world of the hero of the work. Here, emotional-volitional processes are a means of emotional cognition of literary characters.

2) personal emotional-volitional reactions. They contain an element of direct aesthetic evaluation.

3) experiences and reactions that are caused by perception through the work by the personality of the author. The idea of ​​a writer gives rise to a certain emotionally active attitude towards him.

The first type is objective, while the second and third are more subjective. All three types of emotional-volitional experiences coexist in the perception of the work and are interconnected. The mechanism of direct perception is very complex and consists of two parts: the mechanism of creative and emotional-volitional activity and the mechanism of figurative analysis of a literary text. They are internally linked.

The imagination does not immediately, not from the very beginning of reading the work, becomes creatively active and emotional. At first it works passively, then there comes a sharp change in the nature of its work. In this regard, the perception of the work also changes qualitatively. The moment of such a sharp turning point in the perception of the work and in the work of the imagination Binet aptly called entry into the text of the work.

The period of getting a person into the text of a work can be more or less long. It depends, first of all, on the features of the construction of the exposition. The duration of the entry also depends on the readers themselves, on the degree of liveliness and development of their imagination. At the beginning of the work and in its title, readers and viewers find landmarks that “guide” the creative activity of the imagination. O.I. Nikiforova identifies the following landmarks:

1. Orientation in the genre and general nature of the work.

2. Orientation in place and time of action.

3. Orientation in the main characters of the work.

4. Orientation in the emotional attitude of the author to the main characters of the work.

5. Orientation in the action of the work.

6. Orientation in the volume of the work.

7. Orientation in the figurative core of the work.

The mechanism of creative activity is formed by itself and very early, already at a young age, because. it is nothing more than a mechanism for understanding the purposeful behavior of people and their relationships transferred from ordinary life to the perception of literature. Figurative generalizations are formed in people in the process of their life and reading fiction. The mechanism of the figurative analysis of a literary text does not form by itself in the process of life, it must be specially formed, and this requires certain efforts on the part of children.

The usefulness, artistry of perception of literature depends, in addition to the artistic merits of works, on the reader's ability to make a figurative analysis of a literary text. At the stage of direct perception of fiction, the main one is the analysis aimed at extracting the figurative content of works from the text.

Figurative analysis is the basis of a full-fledged artistic perception of literature. From the point of view of perception, the text of a literary work consists of figurative artistic sentences. The sentences are organized into relatively integral, large elements of the work: a description of events, actions, appearance, etc. All major elements are in a certain relationship to each other and are synthesized into a single literary work.

The complex, multifaceted structure of a literary work also determines a multi-layered analysis of the text:

1) analysis of figurative sentences;

2) analysis of large elements in a literary text;

3) analysis of the methods of depicting literary characters.

Let's look at what the analysis of figurative sentences means. Understanding of individual words occurs instantly, while representations associated with words arise only if attention is paid to them after the meanings of words are realized. To understand colloquial speech, non-fiction texts, it is enough to analyze the meanings of words and their correlation, while representations associated with words are usually not needed. Therefore, people develop an attitude towards the conceptual perception of speech.

The analysis of large elements in a literary text occurs according to a double grammatical scheme. The course of the figurative analysis of sentences is determined by the contextual subject. The figurative details extracted from reading a large element are synthesized by readers into a whole complex representation based on their organization in space and time. The integrity and stability of ideas about the complex images of a literary text is ensured by internal speech articulation.

The analysis of a literary text according to a grammatical scheme with an orientation towards images evokes figurative processes in readers, regulates them, and as a result, they get an idea of ​​the images of the text. The material for recreating the images of the text is past visual experience.

There is a feature of the activity of the recreating imagination when reading, perceiving a literary text:

That which flows below the threshold of consciousness on a purely physiological level;

It is impossible to say how the performances turned out, therefore, one gets the impression of a complete immediacy of the perception of fiction.

This immediacy of perception of fiction is not innate, but developed, mediated by the acquisition of skills in the figurative analysis of a literary text and the formation of an attitude towards figurative processes. An analysis of the methods of depicting literary characters is the selection of characters from the text, attributing descriptions to a literary character and extracting from them everything that, one way or another, characterizes a particular character.

When reading a work, the selection of a literary character always occurs by itself, but the selection of image techniques and their assignment to a literary character presents certain difficulties, and the degree of this difficulty depends on the characteristics of the techniques.

The purpose of figurative analysis is to evoke and regulate figurative processes of imagination in readers.

Consider the conditions for understanding literary works:

1. Full direct perception of the work. Proper reconstruction of images and their experience.

2. The essence of the artistic idea.

3. Setting to understand the idea and the need to think about the work.

Young children under no circumstances perceive the idea of ​​a work, even if, as happens in fables, it is directly formulated in the text. For children, a work is a special reality, interesting in itself, and not a generalization of reality. They are affected by the emotional and aesthetic basis of the idea of ​​the work, they are “infected” with the emotional attitude of the author to the characters, but do not generalize this attitude. They discuss only the actions of the heroes, and precisely as the actions of these heroes, and nothing more.

To work on the ideological content, it is necessary to choose works that can have a personal meaning for children, and that when working on these works it is especially important to reveal to them the personal meaning of the idea and the meaning of the works.

Aesthetic evaluation is a direct emotional experience of the aesthetic value of the perceived object and it is a judgment about its aesthetic value based on aesthetic emotion. The objective side of emotion is a reflection of the perceived object in a peculiar form of experience.

Criteria determining aesthetic evaluations:

1. Imagery criterion.

2. The criterion for the veracity of the images of the work.

3. The criterion of emotionality.

4. The criterion of novelty and originality.

5. The criterion of expressiveness.

The ability to experience aesthetic pleasure from truly artistic works and legitimately evaluate their artistic merit depends, first of all, on mastering the figurative analysis of a literary text.

The main way to master the analysis of the features of works of art is an exercise in a detailed comparison of works that are the same or close in theme, differing in form, in the interpretation of the theme. The impact of a literary work does not end with the end of reading. Influence is the result of interaction. The same work can have different effects on different people.

The influence of fiction on people is determined by its peculiarity - by the fact that it is a generalized image of life. The images of the work reflect reality, as well as the experience of the writer, his worldview, and the artistic images of readers are recreated on the basis of their own experiences.

Consider three types of readers' attitudes towards fiction:

1. Identification of literature with reality itself. The impact of fiction on children.

2. Understanding fiction as fiction.

3. Attitude towards fiction as a generalized depiction of reality. This is one of the essential conditions necessary for the transition of superficial feelings to deeper ones and influence people.

There are no children who do not like being read to. But sometimes some children, having learned to read, continue to communicate with the book in this way, while others do not. How can you help your child love books? What can be done to make reading a necessity for him, a pleasure? The answer is unequivocal: the future reader needs to be educated when he is just starting to walk, when he gets to know the world, when he experiences his first surprise from contact with others. Conventionally, in the process of becoming a reader, the following types of reading can be distinguished: indirect (reading aloud to a child), independent (reading by a child without the help of an adult) and creative reading (reading constructed as a process of creative development of a perceived work). But it is not necessary to consider the types of reading we have identified as stages in the formation of the reader, they do not follow each other in a strict temporal sequence, but, gradually arising in the life of the child, they seem to complement each other, becoming pages of his reader's biography.

The first type of reading that a child gets acquainted with is mediated reading. But this type of reading does not lose its significance even when the child begins to read on his own, and when he has already learned to read quite fluently. Therefore, it is important to read books to a child who is already familiar with the alphabet, and who is just establishing his own relationship with the book.
The leading role belongs to the reader, that is, an adult, and the child acts as a listener. This makes it possible for an adult to control the reading process: keep the rhythm, vary the text (for example, insert the name of a child in poems about children), making it more accessible and understandable; read clearly and expressively; monitor the child's reaction. Reading aloud to a child is not an easy task. You can’t monotonously pronounce the text, you need to beat it, take your time, create images of the heroes of the work with your voice.
Reading aloud is somewhat different from independent adult reading - a delightful journey into the land of literary images, taking place in peace and quiet, requiring solitude and complete immersion in the world of fantasy. The child does not sit still for a minute, he constantly asks some questions, is quickly distracted. An adult needs to be ready to respond to questions, comments that suddenly arise in the course of the text, as well as such manifestations of their attitude to what they read as crying, laughter, protest against the course of events set out in the text. Such reading is, first of all, communication (and only adults need to be reminded of this: for children, this is already an indisputable truth). This is your conversation with the child, this is a dialogue with the author of the work. And therefore, you should not refuse to read aloud together, even when the child has learned to read on his own: you need to continue to read, read in turn, listen carefully to how he reads, involve other family members in reading aloud.

Reading aloud is the most important means of building relationships between a child and an adult, but it becomes such only when a number of conditions are met. First, it is necessary not only to reproduce the text, i.e. pronounce it out loud, but also try to comprehend it, understand it. Moreover, for an adult, this task splits into two: he finds something of his own in the text he has read, interprets it from the height of his own life experience, and at the same time tries to create a situation of understanding or an emotional response for the child listening to him. G.-H. Andersen wrote about this phenomenon of the perception of children's literature by adults: "... I definitely decided to write fairy tales! Now I tell from my head, I grab an idea for adults - and I tell for children, remembering that sometimes father and mother also listen and they need to be given food for thought!" The joint perception of a work of fiction, its comprehension must inevitably result in a discussion of what has been read: reading a fairy tale prompts us to reason about good and evil, acquaintance with poetic works makes us think about the unlimited possibilities of language in conveying a variety of meanings and emotions. It is also important how the range of literature for mediated reading will develop: what books we select for children, how diverse they are in subject matter, design, genre or mood. We cannot allow books to be perceived only as entertainment or only as education. The world of fiction is very rich and multicolored, it has a place for both serious conversation and a fun game.

The next type of reading is independent. Actually, reading will not become independent soon, and at first much depends on the adult: on his ability to harmoniously combine attention and interest in the child’s first reading experiences with the former habitual mediated reading aloud. The child himself determines how much his mother (father, grandmother, older sister or brother) reads to him, and how much he reads. The first attempts at reading should be accompanied by the gradual formation of the skill of writing letters, their drawing. For the young reader, it is still more important to get acquainted with the letters, his own reading is largely mechanical in nature: he is more interested in the purely technical side of the matter - how words are made from letters. Therefore, the expressive side of reading fiction (the ability to understand the text, to pay attention to its artistic features) will remain the responsibility of an adult for a long time to come. Another important aspect of the formation of independent reading is the determination of the reading circle of a child who begins to read. When an adult reads a book, the questions that arise in the child during the reading are resolved immediately due to the presence of an adult who can answer them or explain something incomprehensible. How to choose books that will be interesting and understandable for a 4-5-6-year-old child? First, the child will re-read the books already known to him, children very often re-read familiar books, just leafing through them. The child does not stop in development, he simply, in this way, relieves stress by communicating with old friends. During the period of formation of a child's independent reading, it is very important to create additional conditions for his speech development, since his speech, which was recently only oral, has now acquired another form of existence - written. A variety of publications containing various puzzles, word puzzles and games can help with this.

The last type of reading that we have identified will be creative reading, which is the main means of developing a child: developing his speech, imagination, and ability to perceive fiction. It is not enough to read books to a child or create conditions for the formation of a circle of his independent reading. It is important to prepare the child for a meeting with the world of fiction - the world of fiction, fantasy, embodied in verbal images. How to make the frozen sounds of the poem come to life in front of the child? There is only one answer: you need to teach him the creativity of the reader. It is necessary to begin the development of such creative abilities from the period of mediated reading and not to stop these exercises during the formation of independent reading. But reader creativity is formed not only while reading books. A rich imagination is “gathered” gradually from a variety of impressions that a small person has from walking in the forest, from visiting a theater or an exhibition, playing outdoors and at home, observing animals, communicating with others, experiences.

The writer creates the world with the power of imagination, counting on the further co-creation of his reader. The world of a small child is like such a world of fantasy, a fairy tale - you just need to try to see and hear it: to see how two trees stand side by side "whisper", how a saucepan looks like an astronaut's helmet, hear a story told by an old suitcase, or a song of a stream. The creativity inspired by reading can be anything.

L. Tokmakova has wonderful words: “A children's book, for all its outward rusticity, is an exceptionally subtle and not superficial thing. Only the brilliant eye of a child, only the wise patience of an adult can reach its heights. Amazing art - a children's book! The craving for a book, as we said above, appears in children, as a rule, in early childhood. Interest in the book arises because it gives the child the opportunity to act, it gives pleasure both when looking at, and when turning over, and when listening.

In addition, the book satisfies two needs that simultaneously exist in the child: for the unchanging, stable and for the new, unfamiliar. The book is a constant. The child is a variable. The kid picks up a book at any time - but it is still the same. There is self-examination, self-validation. Children, on the other hand, change not only annually, but also hourly - different moods and states, and now the “constant value” is revealed to them in a new way. The joy of discovery! But each child has his favorite places in the book, which he always wants to listen to, watch.

The book is also an opportunity to communicate with adults. Through their speech, intonation, the plot, characters, moods are perceived. You can worry together, have fun and be reliably protected from evil and terrible. As the child grows up, the ways of working with the book change, certain skills are acquired: looking, listening, flipping, “reading”, reproducing previously heard text in accordance with the illustration. All this adds up to a "piggy bank" for the future reader. But in order for a reader to appear capable of co-creation with a writer and illustrator, the help of an adult is needed.

In a correctional institution, the teaching of literature is of particular importance. The analysis of works of art develops a coherent monologue speech of children, develops intonation, contributes to the development of the pronunciation side of speech, etc.

Children's book: its general and specific properties

The specificity of children's literature exists and its roots are in the peculiarities of children's perception of reality, which is qualitatively different from the perception of an adult. Features of children's perception, its typological age-related qualities follow (as evidenced by the works of L. S. Vagotsky, A. T. Parfyonov, B. M. Sarnov and the author's own observations) from the peculiarity of anthropological forms of children's consciousness, which depend not only on psychophysiological factors, but also from the social characteristics of childhood.

The child is a social person, but the social basis on which his social consciousness develops differs from the social basis of the consciousness of a mature person: adults are direct members of the social environment, and an adult mediator plays an important role in the child’s relationship with social reality. The point is that a significant number of the vital functions of the younger generation are satisfied, shaped and stimulated by adults, and this leaves a specific imprint on both the indirect and direct experience of the younger generation. The older the child, the more independent he is in social relations, the less social specificity of childhood in his position.

The younger the reader's age, the brighter the age specificity is manifested, the more specific the work is for children, and vice versa: as readers mature, the specific features of childhood disappear, and the specificity of children's literature fades away. But childhood does not remain unchanged: it changes along with changes in the social environment and reality. The boundaries of the age stages are shifting, therefore it is impossible to consider age specificity as something once and for all given and forever frozen. In today's world of rapid technological progress and ever-increasing information, childhood is accelerating before our eyes. Changes in age specifics naturally lead to changes in the characteristics of children's literature: it grows up. But childhood exists, there is an age specificity, which means that there is also a specificity of children's literature.

According to L. Kassil, the specificity of a children's book is taking into account the age-related possibilities of understanding the reader and, in accordance with this, a prudent choice of artistic means. L. Kassil is supported and even repeated by I. Motyashov: “The whole question of the so-called age specificity since the time of Belinsky comes down to the style of children's works; it should be stated "according to children's perception, accessible, vivid, figurative, exciting, colorful, emotional, simple, clear." But all the listed features of the style of a children's work are also necessary in a work for adults.

The specificity of a children's work lies not only in the form, but above all in the content, in a special reflection of reality. For children, “the objects are the same as for adults”, but the approach to the phenomena of reality, due to the peculiarities of the children’s worldview, is selective: what is closer to the children’s inner world is seen by them in close-up, what is interesting to an adult, but less close to the child’s soul, is seen, as it were, on distance.

The children's writer depicts the same reality as the "adult", but brings to the fore what the child sees big. Changing the angle of view on reality leads to a shift in emphasis in the content of the work, and there is a need for special style techniques. It is not enough for a children's writer to know the aesthetic ideas of children, their psychology, the peculiarities of children's worldview at various age stages, it is not enough to have a "childhood memory". He is required to have high artistic skill and a natural ability in an adult state, deeply knowing the world, each time to see it from the point of view of a child, but at the same time not to remain captive to the child's worldview, but to always be ahead of him in order to lead the reader along.

The specificity of a children's work, its form and content, is manifested primarily in genre originality. In fact, all the genres that exist in "adult" literature exist in children's literature as well: a novel, a story, a short story, a short story, an essay, etc. But the difference between the identical genres of "adult" and children's literature is also obvious. It is explained by the difference in the genre-forming elements, the difference, which is due to a specific orientation towards the reader's perception. All genre-forming elements of a work for children are specific.

Children's literature also introduces the child to the world of nature, awakening in him "the precious ability to empathize, sympathize, rejoice, without which a person is not a person" (K. Chukovsky). But the child does not have a worldview (it is just beginning to form), there is no philosophical understanding of the phenomena of reality, therefore, the emotional, sensually alive and aesthetic attitude of the child to nature is expressed in the content of the landscape of the work for children. In terms of volume, landscape sketches are much smaller than in a work for adults, their syntax is simpler and easier.

Children tend to animate objects, endow them with human qualities, hence the abundance of personification in the story "Kandaur Boys". “The clouds crawled and crawled, the taiga swallowed them indifferently, and they all climbed”, “birch trees densely settled on the edge of the hollow, tickling each other with branches.”

It also seems appropriate to talk about the age specificity of children's literature and distinguish several groups based on the age of the reader:

books for toddlers

books for children 4-7 years old,

literature for younger students,

works for teenagers.

Books for the little ones. The first children's books introduce the child to new objects of the surrounding world and help the development of speech. They enter the life of a child who is not yet able to read and is just beginning to speak. The series "Reading with Mom", for example, is designed for children from 1 year old and includes cardboard books with bright illustrations depicting animals unfamiliar to the child. Such a picture is accompanied either simply by the name of the animal, which the child gradually remembers, or by a short poem that gives an idea of ​​who is depicted in the picture.

Writing such, at first glance, extremely simple verses requires the author to have almost a virtuoso command of the word, because literature for the smallest must solve several difficult tasks at once. Its specificity is determined by the fact that it deals with a person who knows almost nothing about the world around him and is not yet able to perceive complex information. Therefore, in a small volume - often just one quatrain - you need to fit maximum knowledge, while the words should be extremely specific, simple, sentences - short and correct, because listening to these verses, the child learns to speak.

At the same time, the poem should give the little reader a vivid image, point out the characteristic features of the described object or phenomenon. It is no coincidence that the best children's poems heard by a person at a very early age often remain in the memory for life and become the first experience of communicating with the art of the word for his children. As an example, here we can name the poems of S. Ya. Marshak, the poems of A. Barto and K. Chukovsky.

Another characteristic feature of literature for the youngest is the predominance of poetic works. This is not accidental: the child's consciousness is already familiar with rhythm and rhyme - let's remember lullabies and nursery rhymes - and therefore it is easier to perceive information in this form. In addition, a rhythmically organized text gives the little reader a holistic, complete image and appeals to his syncretic perception of the world, which is characteristic of early forms of thinking.

Features of literature for preschoolers. After three years, the reading circle changes somewhat: the simplest books with short poems gradually fade into the background, they are replaced by more complex poems based on game plots, for example, “Carousel” or “Circus” by S. Marshak. The range of topics naturally expands along with the horizons of the little reader: the child continues to get acquainted with new phenomena of the world around him, and books help him in this.

Of particular interest to growing up readers with their rich imagination is everything unusual, therefore poetic fairy tales become the favorite genre of preschoolers: children “from two to five” are easily transferred to a fictional world and get used to the proposed game situation. The fairy tales of K. Chukovsky are still the best example of such books: in a playful way, in a language accessible and understandable to kids, they talk about complex categories, about how the world works in which a little person has to live. At the same time, preschoolers, as a rule, also get acquainted with folk tales, first these are fairy tales about animals, later fairy tales with complex plot twists, with transformations and travels and an invariable happy ending, the victory of good over evil. Thus, literature for older preschoolers not only acquaints readers with the events and phenomena of the world around them, but also forms them. first ethical ideas.

Literature for younger students. The specificity of literature for younger students is determined by the growth of consciousness and the expansion of the range of interests of readers. Yesterday's preschoolers become students, they are even more actively mastering the world around them. Works for children of seven to ten years old are saturated with new information of a more complex order, in connection with this, their volume increases, plots become more complicated, new topics appear. Poetic tales are being replaced by fairy tales, stories about nature, about school life. Their heroes are usually peers of readers, these books tell about the world in which the life of a small person takes place.

At the same time, the young reader is also interested in what is happening in the big world, so all kinds of children's encyclopedias are addressed to him, presenting new knowledge in an entertaining way. In general, entertainment remains the main feature of literature for children of primary school age: they have recently learned to read, reading for them is still work, and making it interesting is one of the author's tasks.

Hence the dynamic plots, travel plots and adventure plots, full of events, and the means of characterizing the hero is often not a description, but a dialogue. But at the same time, the little person’s value system begins to take shape, so entertaining is combined with an increase in the didactic element: the work is structured in such a way as to lead the reader to the conclusion about what is possible and what is not, what is good and what is bad.

So, we can talk about the specifics of children's literature on the basis that it deals with the emerging consciousness and accompanies the reader during his period of intensive spiritual growth. Among the main features of children's literature, one can note informational and emotional richness, entertaining form and a peculiar combination of didactic and artistic components.

List of sources used

Arzamastseva, I. N. Children's literature / I. N. Arzamastseva, S. A. Nikolaeva. – M. : Academy, 2010. – 472 p.

1. Zdir, V. Specificity of children's literature / V. Zdir. - [Electronic resource]. - Access mode:.

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