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Actual problems of childhood in literature for children. Problems of modern children's literature

Actual problems of childhood in literature for children. Problems of modern children's literature

20.06.2020

The specifics of modern children's reading

Specialists of the Russian State Children's Library have been conducting research on children's reading for a number of years. Thus, the study "Children and Periodicals at the Beginning of the 21st Century" analyzed a wide range of problems associated with reading periodicals by children.

Let us present some data from this study.

Reading for children and teenagers today is undergoing significant changes. Today, among the reading public, there is an increase in the number of groups of children, adolescents, youth, for whom magazines are becoming more and more popular. However, despite the seeming diversity of book and magazine products targeted at this audience, far from everything is safe here.

"Disney" magazines and comics are popular with children 9-10 years old, and they are more popular with boys than girls, as well as various magazines for children. Girls from the age of 10-11 are interested in various publications aimed at a female audience. Moreover, by the seventh grade, girls are three times more likely than boys to read youth, women's, and various entertainment publications, while for boys, these are, first of all, publications related to sports, auto business, technical, educational and computer magazines. Thus, the reading of magazines by boys is much broader and more varied than that of girls.

The problem of the creative fate of a novice children's writer

The article by E. Datnova "Return to the kitchen" is devoted to this problem. At the Second Forum of Young Writers of Russia, organized by the Sergei Filatov Foundation for Socio-Economic and Intellectual Programs, Vladimir Venkin, General Director of the Kolobok and Two Giraffes Publishing House, remarked at the seminar “Literature for Children”: “Previously, good writers from the regions were forced to move to Moscow for career. Now there is no such pronounced centripetal, but it is even more difficult for regional writers than before.

The problem is that it is difficult for a peripheral author to become famous and famous. At best, he will be recognized, but his books will not satisfy even a small part of the population that is hungry for good reading. In addition, regional publishing houses publish books in small print runs, which, in principle, cannot cover the whole of Russia. Moscow still remains the all-Russian publishing center.

Appeal of children's poets to prose

Another trend in modern children's literature is manifested in the fact that children's poets are increasingly turning to prose: Tim Sobakin, Lev Yakovlev, Elena Grigoryeva, Marina Bogoroditskaya switched to prose. Perhaps the point here is in the commercial-publishing side of the matter. “At the very end of the 90s. the most progressive publishers finally turned a favorable look at modern children's poets - the long-awaited two-volume book by Valentin Berestov, which became posthumous, was published, selected poems by Viktor Lunin, numerous books by Andrei Usachev in the Samovar publishing house, Roman Sefa reprinted children's poems in the Murzilka magazine, The Kaliningrad publishing house "Yantarny Skaz" published two collections of poems by the Moscow poet Lev Yakovlev. For a short time, the Moscow publishing house “Bely Gorod”, headed by the poet Lev Yakovlev, managed to publish poems by Oleg Grigoriev from Leningrad, Georgy Yudin, Valentin Berestov, Igor Irtenyev from Moscow,” notes L. Zvonareva in the article “Feel the nerve of time”. But if the masters of children's poetry are hardly, but still re-published, then newcomers simply cannot break through here. Ekaterina Matyushkina, a young children's writer from St. Petersburg, one of the authors of today's popular book "Paws Up!" (St. Petersburg, "Azbuka", 2004) (second author - Ekaterina Okovitaya) also started as a poet. But, having received a refusal from publishing houses, she switched to children's detective prose. The book with illustrations made by the author became interested in the "ABC" and released it with a circulation of seven thousand copies. And after the commercial success, they offered an additional print run - a good example of how much it became financially more profitable to write prose.

It's no secret that the commercial success of a book directly depends on the reader's demand. The question immediately arises: why is poetry not in honor today? Not only authors writing for children are now thinking about this. In many ways, time is to blame here, it has become too unpoetic. And what is the time, such are the customs. Or vice versa. If we recall the words of Zinaida Gippius, written in a diary back in 1904, it becomes clear that the human, reader-writer's factor is no less important than the temporal one. They are interconnected and flow into each other. Zinaida Gippius wrote: “... modern poetry collections of both talented poets and mediocre poets turned out to be equally useless to anyone. The reason, therefore, lies not only in the authors, but also in the readers. The reason is the time to which both of them belong - all our contemporaries in general ... "

Contemporary Russian literature consists of works written or first published in Russia from the mid-1990s of the 20th century to the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century. The nineties of the twentieth century entered the history of Russian literature as a period of change in aesthetic, ideological, moral paradigms, "a total change in literature itself, the role of the writer, the type of reader took place." (N. Ivanov) Modern Russian writers realize themselves in a variety of creative directions and genres. Modern prose is widely represented in literature. Features of the development of modern prose : 1. Absolute freedom of the writer (uncensored space) 2. Transitivity, echo with the literature of the Silver Age; 3. Genre creation (memoirs, documentary chronicles, historical novels, autobiographies); 4. Dialogue of cultures; 5. Polyphony - the lack of a single method, style, leader; 6. Modern literature is representatives of different generations: - writers of the sixties(V. Aksenov, V. Voinevich, A. Solzhenitsyn); - authors of the 70s(S.Dovlatov, A.Bitov, V.Makanin, A.Petrushevskaya and others); generation of "perestroika""(V. Pelevin, T. Tolstaya, L. Ulitskaya, V. Sorokin, A. Slapovsky);

-young contemporary writers(A. Utkin, A. Gosteva, I. Stogoff, E. Radov, I. Denezhkina and others);

7. The key problem of modern prose is the search for a new hero. 8. Language - the key symbol of modern society - generates discursiveness, dialogue, understatement, semantic layering. The main directions of modern prose:

1. Neoclassical (realistic) direction - an appeal to the social and ethical problems of life; continues the traditions of Russian classical literature)

2. Conditional-metaphorical direction - the construction of the artistic world on the basis of various types of conventions (fabulous, fantastic, mythological); strong game start.

3. Postmodernism is a direction not only in literature, but also in all humanities - depreciation of reality, destruction of hierarchy, mixing of styles, intertextuality, game moment. Outstanding representatives: V. Erofeev, Sasha Sokolov, V. Pelevin, L. Petrushevskaya, A. Bitov and others. Themes of modern poetry:

1. Appeal to the myth and its transformation (V. Orlov, A. Kim, V. Sorokin, L. Ulitskaya, T. Tolstaya)

2. Village prose (E. Nosov, V. Belov, V. Rasputin) 3. Military theme (V. Astafiev, O. Ermakov, A. Prokhanov) 4. Historical theme (B. Akulin, Yu. Davydov, A. Ivanov ) 5. Fantasy theme
(M. Semenova, S. Lukyanenko, V. Rybakov)6. "Forbidden Topic" - social bottom, erotica, mysticism

7. Political topics (A. Prokhanov "Mr. Hexon", I. Stogoff "Kamikaze", 8. Detective topics (A. Marinina, B. Akunin, P. Dashkova, M. Yudenich) 9. Women's topics

A prominent representative of modern Russian prose is Ludmila Ulitskaya , author of short stories, novellas, novels, laureate of the Russian Booker Prize for the novel The Kukotsky Case. The genre of the story dominates in the work of L. Ulitskaya: cycles " Poor relatives", "Childhood forty-nine", "Girls". Features of stories: 1. the absence of a hero-narrator; written in the form of an impersonal narrative; 2. absence of an external plot; 3. the use of the same characters (Anna Markovna, Berta, Matthias) 4. in the center - female images; 5. return of heroes to the past; 6. The main interest is a private person in private life. In the center of the story "Poor Relatives"- the life of two women: Asya and Anna Markovna. They are relatives, studied in the same class, but there is a line between them. Anna Markovna is a wealthy woman, and Asya is a poor relative, weak-minded. Every month on the twenty-first day, Asya came to Anna Markovna to ask for money. The women chatted about something, Asya listened to Anna Markovna's stories about what was happening in their house. The conversation between the characters is strained, something is missing. Here comes the climax: Anna Markovna takes out her worn things and passes each one separately into the hands of Asya; then, as usual, Asya receives an envelope with a hundred rubles, says goodbye and leaves. She gives the money and things to the semi-paralyzed old woman and beams with joy. Asya always did it secretly and enjoyed being needed by someone. Thus, modern Russian prose is an integral system, which is characterized by multi-genre, thematic diversity, and is built at the intersection of realism and postmodernism.

Actual problems of modern children's literature, periodicals, criticism

Introduction

Today, about 40 million children under the age of 18 live in Russia, which is almost 27% of the total population. To some extent, they are hostages of ongoing socio-economic reforms and especially suffer in a situation of transition, since they belong to the most socially vulnerable segments of the population.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) refers to the right of children to cultural development, education and information.

The moral, intellectual, aesthetic development of children and adolescents is directly related to the spiritual food they receive. A huge role in the socialization of the individual is played by the media and the book. The entry of a child into the book universe occurs primarily with the help of literature specially created for children. It is children's literature that nourishes the mind and imagination of the child, opening up new worlds, images and patterns of behavior for him, being a powerful means of spiritual development of the individual.

Literature for children is a relatively late phenomenon in our national culture and the culture of mankind as a whole. It is known that the phenomena of a later order are relatively mature in nature, since they are created as a result of the organic assimilation of the previous tradition. In the case of children's literature, things are much more complicated. It was long and difficult to separate from "big" ("general") literature, as well as from educational literature. The very fact of separating it into a certain independent area caused and causes negative assessments, and, as a result, there are still discussions in connection with the problem of the so-called "specificity". There are discrepancies even in how to call it: "children's literature" or "literature for children." For example, Polozova T.D., who has been fruitfully dealing with the problems of children's literature and children's reading for many years, separates the concepts of "children's literature" and "literature for children": by "children's literature" she means the work of children proper, and by "literature for children" - everything that is addressed to children.

Nikolai Wagner, Dmitry Minaev, Sasha Cherny, Osip Mandelstam, Oberiuts; attempts are being made to modernly read the works of children's writers of the Soviet period, which are very contradictory and not at all indisputable; some aspects of the history of Russian children's literature of the 19th and 20th centuries are specified.

But, unfortunately, the main thing has not changed: children's literature has remained a peripheral phenomenon, there is no attention to its problems, there are no attempts at a modern interpretation of its phenomenon. The question of the specifics of literature for children is still reduced to the repetition of truths about dynamic plot, accessibility, clarity.

In this work, actual problems of modern children's literature, periodicals and criticism; prospects for the development of literature for children are considered through the study and analysis of special literature, critical articles by literary critics A. Ananichev, E. Datnova, L. Zvonareva; the results of the study of the Russian State Children's Library "Children and Periodicals at the Beginning of the 21st Century"; Analytical article by V. Chudinova presented at the PRESS-2006 exhibition following the results of the round table "Children's press: state policy, realities, prospects".

Chapter 1. Actual problems of modern children's literature, periodicals and criticism

In Soviet society, the reading of children took place in conditions of a general shortage, including for children's literature (the demand for it in the 1980s was satisfied by an average of 30-35%). This speaks of the process of "social deprivation" of children in the 60-80s when they mastered literary culture. By the period of "stagnation" (70-80s), many problems had accumulated in the field of publishing children's literature. The general trend was towards a decrease in the number of titles, while maintaining an annual increase in the average volume of books and a relatively constant circulation. Thus, in the mid-1980s, the indicator of the diversity of children's books in the USSR was 3 times lower than in the FRG, 6 times lower than in France, and about 10 times lower than in Spain. Entire types and genres were in chronic deficit: scientific and educational literature, action-packed (especially fantasy and adventure), encyclopedias and reference books, manuals and guides for leisure activities.

The absence of scientific-cognitive, reference and encyclopedic literature is fraught with the fact that from childhood the child does not form the need to work with a book as one of the main sources of information in various fields of knowledge. To the list of problems, one can add the insufficient publication of the best modern foreign children's literature, the shortage of children's periodicals, etc.

In the eighties, children's literature experienced a serious crisis, the consequences of which were reflected in the work of children's writers in subsequent years.

Swollen from modern "roaming" living conditions, children's literature inexorably pushes out those who create this literature. Galina Shcherbakova, whose stories for teenagers and about teenagers (“Desperate Autumn”, “You never dreamed of ...”, “The door to someone else's life”, etc.) were popular in the eighties (according to the story “You never dreamed ...” even a film with the same name was shot), were published in a hundred thousand copies under the auspices of the Young Guard publishing house, in the nineties and at the beginning of the two thousandth it switched to “adult” literature. Her new, ironic-sarcastic, far from childish works have firmly entered the print conveyor of the Vagrius publishing house.

Tatyana Ponomareva began to write less often for children, Boris Minaev - the author of the book for teenagers "Leva's Childhood" with a foreword by Lev Anninsky. Dina Rubina and Anatoly Aleksin emigrated to Israel, Vladimir Porudominsky, author of children's books about art, and Pavel Frenkel, critic and translator, emigrated to Germany. A former children's poet who wrote in the Oberiut tradition, Vladimir Druk organized a computer magazine for adults in New York. Sergei Georgiev published a non-children's book "The smell of almonds", Alan Milne - "Table by the Orchestra". Famous Moscow poet Roman Sef, presenter of the seminar "Literature for Children" for students of the Literary Institute. A. M. Gorky, also switched to “adult” poetry, meaning his book “Turuses on Wheels”. The children's writer Igor Tsesarsky publishes the newspapers Continent USA, Obzor, and Russian Accent in the United States. Critic Vladimir Alexandrov, writers Yuri Koval, Valentin Berestov, Sergei Ivanov, poet and translator Vladimir Prikhodko died.

1. 2. The specifics of modern children's reading

problems associated with children reading periodicals.

1. 3. The problem of the creative fate of a novice children's writer

1. 4. Appeal of children's poets to prose

Another trend in modern children's literature is manifested in the fact that children's poets are increasingly turning to prose: Tim Sobakin, Lev Yakovlev, Elena Grigoryeva, Marina Bogoroditskaya switched to prose. Perhaps the point here is in the commercial-publishing side of the matter. “At the very end of the 90s. the most progressive publishers finally turned a favorable look at modern children's poets - the long-awaited two-volume book by Valentin Berestov, which became posthumous, was published, selected poems by Viktor Lunin, numerous books by Andrei Usachev in the Samovar publishing house, Roman Sefa republished children's poems in the Murzilka magazine, The Kaliningrad publishing house "Yantarny Skaz" published two collections of poems by the Moscow poet Lev Yakovlev. For a short time, the Moscow publishing house “Bely Gorod”, headed by the poet Lev Yakovlev, managed to publish poems by the Leningrader Oleg Grigoriev, the Muscovites Georgy Yudin, Valentin Berestov, Igor Irtenyev,” notes L. Zvonareva in the article “Feel the nerve of time”. But if the masters of children's poetry are hardly, but still re-published, then newcomers simply cannot break through here. Ekaterina Matyushkina, a young children's writer from St. Petersburg, one of the authors of today's popular book "Paws Up!" (St. Petersburg, "Azbuka", 2004) (second author - Ekaterina Okovitaya) also started as a poet. But, having received a refusal from publishing houses, she switched to children's detective prose. The book with illustrations made by the author became interested in the "ABC" and released it with a circulation of seven thousand copies. And after the commercial success, they offered an additional print run - a good example of how much it became financially more profitable to write prose.

years". Everything more or less acceptable and well-known has been put into the printing house and on the bookshelves - from Russian folk tales and fairy tales of Pushkin, Perrault, the Brothers Grimm to those written in the Soviet era. This return to the classics reveals another problem in today's children's literature: the problem of writing a modern children's book worthy of reading by a child. The one that is “much more difficult” and not “sinful” to write (A. Toroptsev). There are undoubtedly many advantages in reprinting the classics: people need to return the best works of the past, the names of talented writers who, for one reason or another, have been forgotten, whose works have not been republished for a long time or at all - this is required by the literary taste of the modern reader, moreover, this is required justice. Many grew up on this literature, according to the poems of Tokmakova, Barto, Blaginina, Moritz, Dragunsky's stories, we learned to live, think, fantasize. And the reserves for further reprinting of the classics are far from being exhausted: there are, for example, the national literature of the USSR (Nodar Dumbadze, Fazil Iskander, Anver Bikchentaev, Nelli Matkhanova, etc.) and foreign literature (Baum, Dickens, Lewis, etc.).

However, many texts are factually outdated: the names of cities, streets, nature, technology, prices have changed, the ideology itself has changed.

In children's periodicals, there are now a lot of magazines that disappear as quickly as they appear. This is primarily due to the commercial aspect of publishing. It is dangerous and unprofitable for authors to contact such one-day magazines, which are now numerous, - there is a risk of seeing their creations under the names of completely unknown people.

In the late 90s, quite worthy periodicals ceased to exist: "Tram", "Together", "Ochag", "Strigunok", etc. The quality of what is left for the modern child is often in doubt. The results of the research show that today children and adolescents are guided by far from the best, but “fashionable” products in their environment; there is an increasing orientation of children and adolescents to periodicals with a large number of pictures that carry information that is easy to understand: not so much educational as entertaining.

"Once Upon a Time", etc.) come out insignificant for such a huge country as Russia with a circulation of one to two thousand copies. For example, the circulation of "Children's Literature" over the past 10-15 years has fallen from eighty thousand to three thousand. Some publications have experienced a serious transformation, succumbing to modern trends. For example, the Rural Youth magazine, which was once created as a rural version of the urban Youth, has now radically changed its direction and subject matter, publishes interviews with pop stars, notes about youth parties, posters, simple advice in personal life. From the once widely known magazine in Russia, only the name has survived.

1. 6. The commercialization of the book market has had a different impact on the production of children's literature and the picture of children's reading. The beginning of the development of market relations led to a number of crisis processes, in particular, to a sharp decline in the publication of children's literature. In recent years, its output has increased markedly, the quality of children's books has improved. Their subject matter expands, the design becomes attractive. There is a saturation of the market with children's literature, the demand for which is gradually being satisfied. At the same time, the publication of a children's book requires large expenditures compared to many other types of literature, and children's books become more expensive and are inaccessible to the population. Economic difficulties and a sharp decline in the standard of living of most of the population caused a reduction in the ability to meet the purchasing needs of books. According to polls, part of the population refrains from buying books, including children's books.

1. 7. The problem of completing libraries with children's literature

Today, the library remains the only free source of introducing children to reading. With the increase in the cost of books and periodicals, with changes in school programs due to the education reform, as well as with the growing needs of children in a variety of children's literature and school textbooks, the number of young readers in libraries is growing every year. In the context of a constant decline in funding and the destruction of the old book supply system (and the absence of a number of links in the new system that is being built), the acquisition of children's literature in libraries has worsened. Thus, there is still a situation of "book hunger" for many children who are deprived of the opportunity to exercise their right to read.

At the round table meeting "Children's Press: State Policy, Realities, Prospects", organized by the Executive Committee of the "PRESSA-2006" exhibition, the goal was set - to develop specific effective steps to attract the attention of the state and society to the problems of children's publications that educate the child's love for reading and forming the moral foundations of the individual.

Specific proposals were made to support children's literature that promotes high ethical and moral principles:

· Ensuring the legal protection of domestic children's publications;

· Entry of children's literature to kiosk networks free of charge;

· holding the All-Russian Festival of School Libraries;

· holding conferences and seminars on the problems of children's reading in the regions;

· resumption of the annual All-Russian Week of Children's and Youth Books;

· Establishment of insignia for socially significant publications, which will be awarded at the PRESS exhibition based on the results of the work of independent public expert councils. This idea was developed in a number of proposals for holding creative competitions within the framework of the PRESS-2006 exhibition. The participants of the round table were offered by Oleg Zhdanov, director of development of the publishing house "Veselye Kartinki", the concept of a competition with various nominations in the field of children's literature - the competition "The Little Prince" - within the framework of "PRESS-2006";

· Significant addition to the list of children's publications;

· revival of the state order for the publication of children's literature and raising the status of competitions among children's writers to select the best works.

· Make publishing books for children a priority in book publishing.

Without interesting fascinating books it is impossible to imagine a real childhood. However, today the problems of children's reading, publishing books and periodicals for children and adolescents have become even more acute.

Summing up what has been said, let us formulate conclusions that are in many ways as disappointing and serious as the problems of modern literature for children:

· Aspiring writers complain about the impossibility of being published because publishing houses are not interested in them. As a result, there was a gap of almost fifteen years in the literature for children.

· The circulation of children's periodicals is falling at an incredible rate. And in order to avoid this, editors often resort to the help of information "churn", succumbing to the "topics of the day" in the worst sense of the expression.

· The commercialization of the book market has had a negative impact on the production of children's literature and the picture of children's reading: there has been a sharp decline in the publication of children's literature; with the expansion of the subject of children's books, the improvement of their quality, the prices for children's books, which are inaccessible to the population, have increased significantly.

a children's book worthy of reading by a child.

· School and children's libraries contain mostly literature published in Soviet times. What was purchased after the 90s is kept in libraries in small print runs and is issued for reading only in reading rooms.

Turning a blind eye to the current state of children's literature means depriving children of an important part of their lives, indulging bad taste, the development of indifference and lack of spirituality among young people.

Bibliography

1. Ananichev A., Zvonareva L. ... And we have a master class. And you?.. //Children's Literature. 2003, No. 3, p. 28

3. Gippius Z. Diaries. Book. 1, M., 1999. - S. 239

4. Datnova E. Return to the kitchen... // Prologue. - M.: Vagrius, 2002, 432 p. - S. 336

5. Children's literature and education // Sat. tr. international scientific conference. - Tver: TVGU, 2004

7. Zvonareva L. Fundamental change of moral guidelines: notes on modern children's literature and periodicals. //Polish-Russian Literary Seminar, Warsaw - Chlewiska, March 13-16, 2002. - "Grant", Warszawa, 2002, p. 92

9. Zvonareva L. Feel the nerve of time: Notes on modern children's literature and periodicals: Part II // Children's literature. - 2002. - N 4. - p. 16-21

"Russian Literature", 2001, No. 4

11. Polozova T. D. Russian literature for children: Proc. Benefit. -M.: Academia, 1997. S. 23--38

14. Chudinova V. P. Results of the round table "Children's press: state policy, realities, prospects" at the exhibition "PRESS - 2006"

15. Chudinova V.P. Children, adults and periodicals: a view from the library // Portal of print media Witrina.Ru, 2005

At present, with the development of society and the country as a whole, we practically do not notice shortcomings in books. Going into any bookstore, we see hundreds of counters teeming with various genres of literature. The authors of these books are also diverse, and we generally see many for the first time.
We do not immediately notice that despite all the abundance presented for our selection, almost a small amount is occupied by children's literature. Some may attribute fantasy to children's literature, but this will not be entirely true, since fantasy often has a detrimental effect on the inner world of the child, contributing to the loosening of his psyche.
Children's literature, first of all, should be aimed at the moral, intellectual, aesthetic development of children. Indeed, the book plays a huge role here. It is children's literature that nourishes the mind and imagination of the child, opening up new worlds, images and patterns of behavior for him, being a powerful means of spiritual development of the individual. The entry of a child into the book universe occurs primarily with the help of literature specially created for children.
What can book editions offer today to such a young reader? It is very difficult to answer this question, despite the ease of the task.
Of course, there are children's books, but what kind. What is hidden behind such a beautiful cover? What is the content of these stories? There are many disputes and scandals about this, because, despite the beautiful appearance, there is a lot of violence and cruelty inside the book.
Here are lines from a French book: “You must cut off my head and throw it into the sea. Make a hole in the sand and collect in it all the blood that flows out of my body. Here is a knife for you: cut calmly, let your hand not tremble. Charles took the knife Quantique handed him and, without flinching, slit the wizard's daughter's neck. He threw his head into the sea, and collected the blood from the wound into a hole dug in the sand. Undoubtedly, such lines will not leave indifferent more than one parent. After all, why should a child aged 3-5 read bedtime stories about blood and a severed head?
Fairy tales should be wise and kind, teach children kindness and love. Cruelty is not the best tool for raising children. Most fairy tales are based on a comparison of good and evil, we can say that this is a classic scheme. The question is, how is good presented, and how exactly is the notorious evil shown? It is on this question that children's writers should reflect when they begin to recreate their work.
This applies not only to children's literature, but also to children's cinema. Children of any age are always happy to watch some cartoons on TV, but what they show there now leaves much to be desired.
In recent years, cartoons from other countries have become increasingly popular in Russia, displacing the Soviet “Cheburashka and the Crocodile”
Gena", "Kid and Carson", "Prostokvashino" and many other good cartoons. In their place come "Catdog", "Arnold", "SpongeBob" - all of them not only have many design defects, but also do not carry any moral and educational meaning.
As for books coming from other countries, they require a fairly good translation. But sometimes, for our traditional culture, the flow of translated children's literature is controversial. This is exactly what the book “The Kindest in the World” is, where the author takes too freely with the tragic theme of death.
Books requiring literary translation should also occupy a separate place in children's literature. Translation requires no less work than writing the book itself. After all, the integrity of the plot and the transfer of the idea that the author of the book himself wanted to convey depend on the translation.
In Russia, over the past ten years, not a single hero has appeared whose adventures would be interesting to follow, not a single book that would deal with the real problems of a modern child, and not a single film whose popularity would be compared with the popular love for the Adventures of Electronics ” or “Guest from the future”.
One can argue a lot and pointlessly that we don’t have children’s literature because this literature is still obliged to affirm values, teach goodness, and there are no concepts of goodness today even in adult literature, which is why it is busy affirming not values, but brands. All this is true, but children's literature should not assert values outright. It is absolutely useless to educate a child through a book if it is well written, goodness and courage are automatically affirmed in it. And I don’t think that in Russia it was ever good with values, at all times they thought one thing, said another out loud, wrote a third, and taught children a fourth.
Writing for children is not easy. A child will never read a predictable book: he hates the “project”, “product”, the programmed result equally. He is interested in mystery, and there is no greater mystery than the unpredictable behavior of a well-made hero.
Along with an insufficient number of books for young readers, there is a constant hunger for modern stories, novels for teenagers in which they would recognize themselves, today's world. And these books would not be superficial reading matter, but would be written in such a way that readers would “shed tears over fiction”, so that together with the characters they would make moral discoveries, suffer and know the happiness of life.
There is an even greater shortage in poetry books for teenagers. If we have plenty of poems for kids, then there is almost no poetry that excites the soul of a twelve-fourteen-year-old person.
Let's try to imagine an adventure book on modern material. Just put this experiment on yourself, as if tomorrow you had to carry an application to the publisher. What will it be about? Child catches a hitman? Child looking for treasure? Is the child hunting for ghosts? All this has happened a thousand times, you yourself do not notice how one after another you reproduce long-won stamps. The problem is that the main occupation of the child is to discover the world anew, as if no one had visited this planet before him. Therefore, it is pointless to retell to him the plots already played out: Stevenson had treasures, Twain had the hunt for villains, Vern had mysterious travels, everyone had ghosts. Today, creating a good children's book means writing brightly and recklessly about something that has not yet been written about: about the moral problems of a reality show participant, about emergency show, about life in a self-proclaimed mafia republic, whose independence half the world has recognized, and half the world is afraid ... But for this you need to be keenly interested in the topic yourself.
The trouble is not that we have nothing to teach our children. The trouble is that we have nothing to explain to ourselves: the very process of creativity, always associated with the search for the mysterious and unpredictable, has been compromised and forced out of our consciousness.
Children love only what is written with delight, with the highest degree of creative freedom, but how much in our prose can withstand this criterion? Today, I think, the joy of creativity is known only to those very few authors who can afford to be themselves, and many others lack the vitamin of happiness - the one that a child is looking for in literature, first of all. We have forgotten how to do what we want and write what we think, but what happiness without it?
Therefore, for writers who have decided to dedicate their work to serving children, they must also learn to immerse themselves in the world that they open to children on the pages of their books. Learn to be storytellers not only for readers, but also for yourself.
A special topic among the problems of children's literature is the invasion of the adult world into the space of children's books. There were times when poetry for children was like a cozy lawn, where children played among bunnies and Christmas trees, and they had cheeks, pens, eyes, lips. The rumble of the adult world did not reach this cozy lawn. Then another era came, when the adult world, like a tank, drove into the children's room. As in everything, harmony is also needed here. On the one hand, the children's world should, like a communicating vessel, feel the phenomena of adult life, on the other hand, in no case should it be flooded with a stream of purely adult interests.
The introduction of children to the adult world should take place gradually, and should take place. Because no matter how parents want to extend the childhood of their child, protecting him from the cruelty of life, sooner or later the child will still have to plunge into this environment, and it is better to do this gradually than by the method of a sharp jump.
Even here the book has its influence on this issue. Through it, you can begin to prepare the ground for the further upbringing of the child.
So, starting from the origins of the problem, let's try to penetrate into its depth. Why is there such an acute shortage of children's literature now? Why books have been supplanted by films and how to deal with it? What is the mission of children's literature and its creators today? Let's try to find answers to these questions.
Having considered preschool children, we will try to deal with older children. What kind of literature do teenagers need?
To begin with, it is worth paying attention to what marked the beginning of the 21st century in literature.
The end of the twentieth century is due to great upheavals. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the formation of new states could not but affect the life of society. Under the influence of these processes, there is a shift in public consciousness, which has a certain impact on the development of children's literature and literature in general.
The absence of scientific-cognitive, reference and encyclopedic literature is fraught with the fact that from childhood the child does not form the need to work with a book as one of the main sources of information in various fields of knowledge. To the list of problems, one can add the insufficient publication of the best modern foreign children's literature, the shortage of children's periodicals, etc.
In the eighties, children's literature experienced a serious crisis, the consequences of which were reflected in the work of children's writers in subsequent years.
Tatyana Ponomareva began to write less often for children, Boris Minaev - the author of the book for teenagers "Leva's Childhood" with a foreword by Lev Anninsky. Dina Rubina and Anatoly Aleksin emigrated to Israel, Vladimir Porudominsky, author of children's books about art, and Pavel Frenkel, critic and translator, emigrated to Germany.
Modern writers in their works are trying to show new realities, which requires non-standard approaches. The heroes of the works are characters who only yesterday were considered unworthy to be in society.
Despite this turn, modern children's literature has not changed its course. Its development trends throughout the twentieth century have continued to this day. The child, as an independent person, thinking, feeling, able to evaluate the world around him, is the hero of many contemporary authors. Modern children's poems, stories and fairy tales are mostly easy to read and understand for the smallest readers. At the heart of such works, as before, is folklore.
Heroes created by the people continue to live in modern works. Also in modern children's literature, relationships between peers and adults are very widely described. This is especially welcome in modern conditions, when the frantic pace of life does not always provide adults with the opportunity to communicate with children. And such genres as children's fiction, fantasy and children's detective story in modern children's literature have become the most readable among teenagers and answered the critics' question of what to read.
The beginning of the twenty-first century is also driven by the return of children's magazines and newspapers. "Murzilka", "Funny Pictures" are becoming favorites of a new generation. Therefore, the question of what to read to a child is not as relevant now as it was in the nineties of the twentieth century.
However, not everything is so rosy. Book reviews are full of such expressions as plagiarism, low-quality literature, and so on. Nostalgia for Barto, Marshak, Chukovsky haunts critics. Returning to the past, it is simply necessary to think about the new and promising. Another problem of the present time is the problem that every year children read less and less. Therefore, the question is not what to read, but how and where to read comes to the fore. Computers, 24-hour children's cable channels have become real rivals of children's books.
Literary meetings and competitions, which have recently resumed, are called upon to solve this problem. At which the author community is offered not only reviews of books, but also how to attract the attention of readers. Children's libraries support the initiatives of contemporary authors. Days of the book, celebration of anniversaries of children's authors, exhibitions of new books and this is just a small list of the events that libraries hold.
Literature for children is a rather specific phenomenon. It was long and difficult to separate from "big" ("general") literature, as well as from educational literature. The very fact of separating it into a certain independent area caused and causes negative assessments, and, as a result, there are still discussions in connection with the problem of the so-called "specificity". There are discrepancies even in how to call it: "children's literature" or "literature for children."
Over the past fifteen years, there has been a significant movement associated with the correction of children's reading: the works focused on Soviet ideology have been excluded, the undeservedly “forgotten” Nikolai Vagner, Dmitry Minaev, Sasha Cherny, Osip Mandelstam have been returned; attempts are being made to modernly read the works of children's writers of the Soviet period, which are very contradictory and not at all indisputable; some aspects of the history of Russian children's literature of the 19th and 20th centuries are specified.
But, unfortunately, the main thing has not changed: children's literature has remained a peripheral phenomenon, there is no attention to its problems, there are no attempts at a modern interpretation of its phenomenon. The question of the specifics of literature for children is still reduced to the repetition of truths about dynamic plot, accessibility, clarity.
But are the people who so sharply separate children's literature from the general stream of literature true and what can be attributed to it? As mentioned earlier, children's literature is separated from adult literature so that the world of the child is not invaded by all those adult aspects that are depicted in the books of the older generation. But it would be wrong to believe that children's literature should be limited to fairy tales, fantasy and color magazines. However, this is exactly what today's children are often passionate about.
Reading for children and teenagers today is undergoing significant changes. Today, among the reading public, there is an increase in the number of groups of children, adolescents, youth, for whom magazines are becoming more and more popular.
Despite the great popularity of magazines among children, one cannot note their practical benefits, because they do not carry any intellectual development. Of course, there are a lot of types of magazines, but such magazines as about animals or plants are in rather less demand than magazines about princesses and cars, full of bright pictures and colorings.
Along with these circumstances, there is another equally important problem related to the fate of the beginning children's writer. The problem is that it is difficult for a peripheral author to become famous and famous, especially since at the moment, as we found out, children's literature is not in proper demand. At best, he will be recognized, but his books will not satisfy even a small part of the population that is hungry for good reading. In addition, regional publishing houses publish books in small print runs, which, in principle, cannot cover the whole of Russia. Moscow still remains the all-Russian publishing center.
Also, a children's writer must not only find a way to publish his book, but also attract readers to it, and it is very difficult to do this, because, unlike magazines that lure children with drawings and pictures, the inside of the book cannot be immediately comprehended. This is another reason why books are less popular than magazines.
Another trend in modern children's literature is manifested in the fact that children's poets are increasingly turning to prose: Tim Sobakin, Lev Yakovlev, Elena Grigoryeva, Marina Bogoroditskaya switched to prose. Perhaps the point here is in the commercial-publishing side of the matter.
“At the very end of the 90s. the most progressive publishers finally turned a favorable look at modern children's poets - the long-awaited two-volume book by Valentin Berestov, which became posthumous, was published, selected poems by Viktor Lunin, numerous books by Andrey Usachev in the Samovar publishing house, reprinted children's poems by Roman Sefa in the Murzilka magazine, The Kaliningrad publishing house "Yantarny Skaz" published two collections of poems by the Moscow poet Lev Yakovlev.
But if the masters of children's poetry are hardly, but still re-published, then newcomers simply cannot break through here. It's no secret that the commercial success of a book directly depends on the reader's demand. The question immediately arises: why is poetry not in honor today? Not only authors writing for children are now thinking about this. In many ways, time is to blame here, it has become too unpoetic. And what is the time, such are the customs. Or vice versa. If we recall the words of Zinaida Gippius, written in a diary back in 1904, it becomes clear that the human, reader-writer's factor is no less important than the temporal one. They are interconnected and flow into each other. Zinaida Gippius wrote: “... modern poetry collections of both talented poets and mediocre poets turned out to be equally useless to anyone. The reason, therefore, lies not only in the authors, but also in the readers. The reason is the time to which both of them belong - all our contemporaries in general ... "
The quality of contemporary children's literature, the literature of the 21st century, for the most part, leaves much to be desired. It is not surprising that modern publishing houses prefer to republish works of "past years". Everything more or less acceptable and well-known has been put into the printing house and onto the bookshelves - from Russian folk tales and fairy tales of Pushkin, Perrault, the Brothers Grimm to those written in the Soviet era. This return to the classics reveals another problem in today's children's literature: the problem of writing a modern children's book worthy of reading by a child.
There are undoubtedly many advantages in reprinting the classics: people need to return the best works of the past, the names of talented writers who, for one reason or another, were forgotten, whose works have not been republished for a long time or at all - this is required by the literary taste of the modern reader, moreover, this is required justice.
However, many texts are factually outdated: the names of cities, streets, nature, technology, prices have changed, the ideology itself has changed.
Today, children and adolescents are far from being guided by the best, but “fashionable” products in their environment; the orientation of children and adolescents to magazines with a large number of pictures that carry information that is easy to understand is increasing: not so much educational as entertaining. Journals aimed at psychological, pedagogical, literary development are issued in fairly small circulations.
The commercialization of the book market has affected the production of children's literature and the picture of children's reading in different ways. The beginning of the development of market relations led to a number of crisis processes, in particular, to a sharp decline in the publication of children's literature.
In recent years, its output has increased markedly, the quality of children's books has improved. Their subject matter expands, the design becomes attractive. There is a saturation of the market with children's literature, the demand for which is gradually being satisfied. At the same time, the publication of a children's book requires large expenditures compared to many other types of literature, and children's books become more expensive and are inaccessible to the population.
Economic difficulties and a sharp decline in the standard of living of most of the population caused a reduction in the ability to meet the purchasing needs of books. Many people, due to insufficient material resources, are forced to limit themselves in acquiring children's literature.
Today, the library remains the only free source of introducing children to reading. But in the context of a constant decline in funding for the supply of books, the acquisition of libraries with children's literature has worsened. More and more often on the shelves we see books that have long been known to us, magazines of a long-standing publication. Children have virtually no choice in the library, and the proposed copies of a long time ago are boring and insipid. Thus, there is still a situation of "book hunger" for many children who are deprived of the opportunity to exercise their right to read.
Literature develops many abilities of children: it teaches them to seek, understand, love - all the qualities that a person should possess. It is books that form the inner world of a child. Largely thanks to them, children dream, fantasize and invent. Without interesting fascinating books it is impossible to imagine a real childhood. However, today the problems of children's reading, publishing books and magazines for children and adolescents have become even more acute.
Summing up what has been said, it should be said that despite the first insignificance of the topic I raised, it has problems, and very tangible ones. These problems require careful consideration and immediate solution, because the future of our children depends on this, their familiarization with books and the formation of the spiritual, psychological, moral and ethical aspects of life.
Turning a blind eye to the current state of children's literature means depriving children of an important part of their lives, indulging bad taste, the development of indifference and lack of spirituality among young people.
Thus, we can boldly conclude that children's literature has serious problems, the solution of which depends only on you and me. We must try to create better conditions for future generations, because our future is in children, which we must take care of for now.

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Introduction

Chapter 1. Actual problems of modern children's literature, periodicals, criticism

1.1.

1.2. The specifics of modern children's reading

1.3. The problem of the creative fate of a novice children's writer

1.4. Appeal of children's poets to prose

1.5. Low quality level of modern books and periodicals for children

1.6. Commercialization of the book market

1.7. The problem of acquisition of libraries with children's literature

Chapter 2. Prospects for the development of children's literature and periodicals

Conclusion

Literature.

Introduction

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) refers to the right of children to cultural development, education and information.

Literature for children is a relatively late phenomenon in our national culture and the culture of mankind as a whole. It is known that the phenomena of a later order are relatively mature in nature, since they are created as a result of the organic assimilation of the previous tradition. In the case of children's literature, things are much more complicated. It was long and difficult to separate from "big" ("general") literature, as well as from educational literature. The very fact of separating it into a certain independent area caused and causes negative assessments, and, as a result, there are still discussions in connection with the problem of the so-called "specificity". There are discrepancies even in how to call it: "children's literature" or "literature for children." For example, Polozova T.D., who has been fruitfully dealing with the problems of children's literature and children's reading for many years, separates the concepts of "children's literature" and "literature for children": by "children's literature" she understands the actual work of children, and by "literature for children" - everything that is addressed to children.

Over the past fifteen years, there has been a significant movement related to the adjustment of the circle of children's reading: the works focused on Soviet ideology have been excluded, the undeservedly “forgotten” Nikolai Vagner, Dmitry Minaev, Sasha Cherny, Osip Mandelstam, “Oberiuts” have been returned; attempts are being made to modernly read the works of children's writers of the Soviet period, which are very contradictory and not at all indisputable; some aspects of the history of Russian children's literature of the 19th and 20th centuries are specified.

Chapter 1. Actual problems of modern children's literature, periodicals and criticism

1.1. The Crisis of Children's Literature in the 1980s

In the eighties, children's literature experienced a serious crisis, the consequences of which were reflected in the work of children's writers in subsequent years.

Tatyana Ponomareva began to write less often for children, Boris Minaev - the author of the book for teenagers "Leva's Childhood" with a foreword by Lev Anninsky. Dina Rubina and Anatoly Aleksin emigrated to Israel, Vladimir Porudominsky, author of children's books about art, and Pavel Frenkel, critic and translator, emigrated to Germany. A former children's poet who wrote in the Oberiut tradition, Vladimir Druk organized a computer magazine for adults in New York. Sergei Georgiev published a non-children's book "The smell of almonds", Alan Milne - "Table by the Orchestra". Famous Moscow poet Roman Sef, presenter of the seminar "Literature for Children" for students of the Literary Institute. A.M. Gorky, also switched to “adult” poetry, meaning his book “Turuses on Wheels”. The children's writer Igor Tsesarsky publishes the newspapers Continent USA, Obzor, and Russian Accent in the United States. Critic Vladimir Alexandrov, writers Yuri Koval, Valentin Berestov, Sergei Ivanov, poet and translator Vladimir Prikhodko died.

1.2. The specifics of modern children's reading

Let us present some data from this study.

1.3. The problem of the creative fate of a novice children's writer

1.4. Appeal of children's poets to prose

1.5. Low quality level of modern books and periodicals for children

In the preface to the literary almanac "In the Room Behind the Scenes", Alexander Toroptsev writes the following words: "It is much more difficult to write well for children and about children, but it is a sin to write badly."

The quality of contemporary children's literature, the literature of the 21st century, for the most part, leaves much to be desired. It is not surprising that modern publishing houses prefer to republish works of "past years". Everything more or less acceptable and well-known has been put into the printing house and on the bookshelves - from Russian folk tales and fairy tales of Pushkin, Perrault, the Brothers Grimm to those written in the Soviet era. This return to the classics reveals another problem in today's children's literature: the problem of writing a modern children's book worthy of reading by a child. The one that is “much more difficult” and not “sinful” to write (A. Toroptsev). There are undoubtedly many advantages in reprinting the classics: people need to return the best works of the past, the names of talented writers who, for one reason or another, have been forgotten, whose works have not been republished for a long time or at all - this is required by the literary taste of the modern reader, moreover, this is required justice. Many grew up on this literature, according to the poems of Tokmakova, Barto, Blaginina, Moritz, Dragunsky's stories, we learned to live, think, fantasize. And the reserves for further reprinting of the classics are far from being exhausted: there are, for example, the national literature of the USSR (Nodar Dumbadze, Fazil Iskander, Anver Bikchentaev, Nelli Matkhanova, etc.) and foreign literature (Baum, Dickens, Lewis, etc.).

However, many texts are factually outdated: the names of cities, streets, nature, technology, prices have changed, the ideology itself has changed.

And magazines of high quality in the selection of psychological, pedagogical, literary, fine and other material (“Family and School”, “Children's Literature”, “Literature at School”, “First of September”, “Anthill”, “Once Upon a Time”, etc. .) come out insignificant for such a huge country as Russia with a circulation of one to two thousand copies. For example, the circulation of "Children's Literature" over the past 10-15 years has fallen from eighty thousand to three thousand. Some publications have experienced a serious transformation, succumbing to modern trends. For example, the Rural Youth magazine, which was once created as a rural version of the urban Youth, has now radically changed its direction and subject matter, publishes interviews with pop stars, notes about youth parties, posters, simple advice in personal life. From the once widely known magazine in Russia, only the name has survived.

1.6. The commercialization of the book market has affected the production of children's literature and the picture of children's reading in different ways. The beginning of the development of market relations led to a number of crisis processes, in particular, to a sharp decline in the publication of children's literature. In recent years, its output has increased markedly, the quality of children's books has improved. Their subject matter expands, the design becomes attractive. There is a saturation of the market with children's literature, the demand for which is gradually being satisfied. At the same time, the publication of a children's book requires large expenditures compared to many other types of literature, and children's books become more expensive and are inaccessible to the population. Economic difficulties and a sharp decline in the standard of living of most of the population caused a reduction in the ability to meet the purchasing needs of books. According to polls, part of the population refrains from buying books, including children's books.

1.7. The problem of acquisition of libraries with children's literature

Chapter 2. Prospects for the development of children's literature and periodicals

Specific proposals were made to support children's literature that promotes high ethical and moral principles:

abolition of VAT on children's periodicals;

· Ensuring the legal protection of domestic children's publications;

· Entry of children's literature to kiosk networks free of charge;

· analysis of the state of funds of school and children's libraries and development of a program for their replenishment;

· provision of subsidies to libraries for subscription to socially significant publications;

· holding the All-Russian Festival of School Libraries;

· holding conferences and seminars on the problems of children's reading in the regions;

· resumption of the annual All-Russian Week of Children's and Youth Books;

· Significant addition to the list of children's publications;

· promotion of the best books and magazines for both children and parents.

· revival of the state order for the publication of children's literature and raising the status of competitions among children's writers to select the best works.

· Make publishing books for children a priority in book publishing.

Conclusion

Literature develops many abilities of children: it teaches them to seek, understand, love - all those qualities that a person should possess. It is books that form the inner world of a child. Largely thanks to them, children dream, fantasize and invent.
Without interesting fascinating books it is impossible to imagine a real childhood. However, today the problems of children's reading, publishing books and periodicals for children and adolescents have become even more acute.

Summing up what has been said, let us formulate conclusions that are in many ways as disappointing and serious as the problems of modern literature for children:

· Children's poets switch to prose or begin to create in a variety of genres. The polyphony of creativity is also a peculiar sign of the excessive saturation of time.

· The quality of modern children's literature, the literature of the XXI century, for the most part, leaves much to be desired. This reveals another problem of children's literature: the problem of writing a modern children's book worthy of reading by a child.

It turns out that children's literature now has far from children's problems.

Literature:

1. Ananichev A., Zvonareva L. ... And we have a master class. And you?.. //Children's Literature. 2003, No. 3, p. 28

2. In the room behind the stage. Literary almanac. M., 2003. - 224 p. - p.4

3. Gippius Z. Diaries. Book 1, M., 1999. - S.239

4. Datnova E. Return to the kitchen... // Prologue. - M.: Vagrius, 2002, 432 p. - S. 336

5. Children's literature and education // Sat. tr. international scientific conference. - Tver: TVGU, 2004

6. Children's literature and education // Collection of scientific papers of the International Scientific Conference. Issue. 2. - Tver: TVGU, 2005

8. Zvonareva L. Feel the nerve of time: Notes on modern children's literature and periodicals // Children's literature. - 2002. - N 3. - p. 10-14

9. Zvonareva L. Feel the nerve of time: Notes on modern children's literature and periodicals: Part II // Children's literature. - 2002. - N 4. - p. 16-21

10. Kuteynikova N.E. "On the issue of modern books for children", "Russian literature", 2001, No. 4

11. Polozova T.D. Russian literature for children: Proc. Allowance.-M.: Academia, 1997. S.23--38

12. Modern problems of children's reading and book publishing for children: our view. - Book Chamber, 2003

13. Collection of materials of the Second Forum of Young Writers of Russia. - Book Chamber, 2002

14. Chudinova V.P. Results of the round table "Children's press: state policy, realities, prospects" at the exhibition "PRESS - 2006"