[Academic Controversy] Author: Wu Xiangyu (Professor at the Children's Literature Research Center of Zhejiang Normal University) Editor's note: Is there a distinction between children's literature and adult literature? How does classic children's literature possess literary charm that transcends time and space? In this issue of 'Academic Controversy', we will continue to discuss the topic of whether children's literature has uniqueness. Scholar Zhang Wen uses the genre of fairy tales as an example to elaborate, analyzing the history of traditional Chinese children's books and the creation and translation of Western fairy tales. He believes that classic fairy tales eliminate the reading boundary between adults and children, and their literary core transcends time, space, and national borders, becoming a common spiritual heritage of humanity; Scholar Wu Xiangyu believes that reaffirming the uniqueness of children's literature is to reconstruct a knowledge system that integrates literary and ideological development, and to confirm the essence of "children's literature as children's literature". Children's literature is the driving force for enlightening readers, disseminating knowledge, and constructing children's identities. Both scholars believe that children's literature is not a form of reduced dimensional writing, and truly excellent children's literature transcends age and is suitable for all ages. In the literary family, children's literature has become an independent literary genre with its clear "child" orientation. As an organic component of modern knowledge, the uniqueness of children's literature lies in its definition as a "knowledge set" by children's readers. On the surface, children's literature works do not directly provide or deliberately present factual knowledge, but the social, aesthetic, situational, and practical knowledge they convey subtly helps children readers understand the world. Whether it is "discovering children" or "inventing children's literature", they are both manifestations of the evolution of human civilization. From this perspective, children's literature is neither simple literature nor literature that lowers standards, but literature that is highly challenging and difficult. Due to the particularity of children's readers, children's literature was once regarded as "shallow thinking" or "conservative" simple literature. There has even been a misconception in the Western academic community that it is not appropriate to discuss children's literary ideas. Obviously, these views not only confuse the unique textual form and ideological connotation of children's literature, but also ignore the logic and mechanism of the occurrence of children's literature. In fact, there is no such thing as thoughtless literature in the world, and the intervention of ideas is precisely the mechanism of children's literature. The reason is simple: thought is the means by which humans understand and construct the world. Without modern ideas about children, children's literature would also be difficult to emerge. Children's literature has the aesthetic characteristics of lightness and lightness, and its authors undertake writing tasks in two dimensions: lightness and heaviness. Overly or excessively lightness cannot maintain the balance between children's literature ideas and art. Under the negative influence of methods such as literary reflection theory and literary sociology, children's literature once carried a heavy weight of ideas. When this excess of ideas is even pushed to the extreme, it becomes a footnote to specific ideas. At the same time, in order to pursue and release the power of fantasy, some children's literature works have shown a phenomenon of inversion between fantasy and reality, which has once again fallen into the quagmire of cultural weightlessness or vulgarization. Therefore, reiterating the characteristics of children's literature is not at the cost of rejecting ideological ideas, nor does it indicate that it is literature with ideological limitations, but rather to rebuild a knowledge system that integrates literary and ideological development, and to confirm the essence of "children's literature as children's literature". In summary, people have three biases towards children's literature: simplification, narrowing, and weakening. The fundamental reason is that people have misinterpreted the concept of children's literature and degraded the inherent spiritual qualities of children's literature. As literature from the beginning of human history, the value of children's literature in the process of human civilization cannot be underestimated, and we cannot arbitrarily regard it as a separate subculture. It is not difficult to trace the history of civilization and find that using children as symbols of civilization for emotional and economic investment is a modern phenomenon. The emergence of children's literature is a concrete manifestation of human society's "literary investment" in children. In describing or creating texts for children, we can gain insight into the pulse of civilization evolution. It can be said that children's literature is both a carrier of civilization and a form of civilization. From the perspective of civilization, the establishment of children's subjectivity is no different from an ideological revolution. It is a necessary condition for the emergence of children's literature, and the emergence of children's literature has positively promoted the cultural shaping project of children. In academic history, in addition to the denigration of ideas, children's literature language has also been regarded as synonymous with "shallow language", branded with the stereotype of "pediatrics". So, those profound languages are naturally excluded from the discourse system of children's literature. From a structural perspective, children's literature can be divided into early childhood literature, childhood literature, and youth literature, with the language differences between the two being the greatest. If the language of early childhood literature is simple and easy to understand, this is in line with common sense, but the language of youth literature is closer to adult literature and far beyond what can be summarized by simple language. Moreover, the depth or difficulty of language is not the standard for distinguishing children's literature from adult literature. When reading children's literature, children are more likely to accept shallow language rather than obscure and difficult to understand sentences. Shallow language helps readers enter the story context more smoothly. But shallow language does not equal deception of means or dilution of intelligence. On the contrary, it is what Canadian scholar Perry Nordman called the "smart way". Because shallow language is only superficial, there are complex connotations hidden behind it that need to be understood by children readers. To create shallow language literature, adult writers must cross identities to experience childhood and achieve true communication and interaction with children. Cao Wenxuan believes that this kind of "just low" itself is a difficult art. On the one hand, adult writers need to consider the language acceptance level of children's readers, and on the other hand, they cannot lose the subjectivity of adults themselves. Adult literature does not need to consider the issue of language subjects, but children's literature is different. It must clarify the language subject issues of "who to express" and "to whom to express". As the creative subject of children's literature, the language of adult writers cannot replace or be equated with children's language, and children cannot replace adults as creators. This leads to the dilemma of "for children" or "for adults", and the structural dislocation of this language subject is precisely the essential difference between children's literature and adult literature language. In order to create, adult writers must artistically handle the language transition between two generations. The rigid "bowing" or mechanical "imitation" cannot achieve intergenerational language communication, and the children's literature works they create are also difficult for children to truly enjoy. Tracing back to its roots, the root cause of the dwarfism in children's literature lies in people imagining children too small and misinterpreting the role that children's literature plays in a person's life. From the perspective of genetics, the child centered theory has contributed to the emergence of children's literature, but due to excessive emphasis on the uniqueness of children, it has widened the gap between children and adults while reinforcing the purpose of "children are children", creating a narrow theoretical dichotomy between children and adults. Similarly, in order to protect subjectivity, some people attempt to draw an unbreakable boundary between children's literature and adult literature, resulting in children's literature leading to a self enclosed state. This indiscriminate distinction not only lowers the disciplinary status of children's literature, but also banishes the social function of children's literature and adult literature participating in the process of civilization together. In fact, children's literature is not "pediatrics", but rather "big literature". The 'big' here mainly manifests in two aspects: significant meaning and difficulty in writing. Children's literature does not reject the grand proposition of the complex relationship between humans and the world. At the beginning of its occurrence, children's literature was educationally bound, and children's books were often regarded as educational materials. Therefore, the hierarchy between children and adults arises, with children being set as silent writers. Neither the children in the text nor the child readers participate in the knowledge production of children's literature and the negotiation of the meaning of the text. Due to the vagueness of children's ideology, the power of adult writers has been greatly exercised. However, despite the weakening and concealment of children's discourse power, adults as knowledge producers cannot ignore the existence of children, otherwise the knowledge attributes of children's literature will not be confirmed. After all, the uniqueness of children's literature is not limited to content or form, but mainly lies in the structure and methods of its knowledge production. When discussing the characteristics of children's literature, British scholar Peter Hunter believes that although children's literature belongs to the "cultural frontier group", its biggest advantage is that it will not become the "private property" of other groups. In this sense, children's literature is not a product of adult "dimensional reduction" writing, but rather a driving force for enlightening readers, disseminating knowledge, and constructing children's identities. Truly excellent children's literature works are not limited in ideas and art, they transcend age and are suitable for all ages. Ultimately, children's literature belongs to the category of literature and should have the commonalities of general literature. We cannot ignore its commonalities with adult literature in order to highlight its characteristics. In the human literary system, children's literature is not a copy or miniature version of adult literature, but a cohesive whole that works together to present the complete form of human childhood life. The practice of blindly distinguishing between children's literature and adult literature by emphasizing subjectivity will only lead to the erosion of the characteristics of children's literature. To this end, we need to call for the noble cultural spirit of children's literature, break away from the misconception of simple literature, and contribute greater strength to serving the comprehensive development of children. (New Society)