The carrier of the enlightenment education of children's literature is children's literature, so it is necessary to understand the essence, characteristics and functions of children's literature.

1. The essence of children's literature-aesthetics

Children's literature activity, like general literature activity, is an aesthetic spiritual activity. Aesthetic activity is the activity of appreciating beautiful things and creating beautiful works. Because literature is the product of writers' aesthetic reflection on social life, that is to say, the artistic image created by writers has aesthetic significance. Similarly, children's literature, including children's literature, is created by writers in accordance with the law of beauty and using artistic means adapted to children, presenting beautiful works that children are willing to accept, in order to arouse the aesthetic feeling of young readers and meet their diverse aesthetic requirements. In the book Principles of Children's Literature, Jiang Feng pointed out that the essence of children's literature is "the life communication between adults and children in the aesthetic field, which shows that children's literature is a dream of life woven by adults and children together." "The aesthetic feature of modern children's literature lies in the integration and coordination of the aesthetic consciousness of adults and children." In a word, children's literature is essentially "children's aesthetic literature".

2. Children's literature is the most distinctive feature of children's literature.

Children's literature is a part of literature, and its task, nature and development law are consistent with literature, that is to say, children's literature is a part of literature with children's characteristics. Specifically, children's literature is a literary work specially created and compiled for children according to their psychological characteristics and aesthetic needs, which is loved by children and suitable for children to read and appreciate. These works include fairy tales, novels, stories, essays, nursery rhymes, children's poems, dramas, reportage, scientific literature and other genres. The main purpose and significance of children's literature for children is to accompany and promote their spiritual growth. The characteristics of children's literature are as follows:

① Reflect children's real world and imaginary world;

(2) expressing children's feelings and wishes, which is full of children's interests;

3 The characters are vivid and vivid, and the story is full of twists and turns;

The theme is positive and clear, the style is relaxed and the rhythm is bright;

⑤ The language is concrete, vivid, lively and beautiful;

⑥ According to readers' age, it is divided into stages and levels.

Generally speaking, readers in the field of children's literature include children and adolescents aged 0- 15. In view of the obvious differences in children's aesthetic taste, appreciation habits and acceptance ability at different stages, children's literature includes three levels, namely, children's literature, childhood literature and adolescent literature. Children's literature refers to children's literature works for children under 6 years old, mainly including picture books, nursery rhymes, children's poems, stories, fairy tales, essays, plays and other genre forms. In order to adapt to the characteristics of children's physical and mental development and literature appreciation, children's literature has its own distinctive characteristics, mainly including:

① Simple content and its expression;

② Playfulness, entertainment and interest are obvious;

③ The language is concise, standardized and colloquial;

④ Repetition, contrast and personification are often used;

⑤ The main presentation methods are graphic combination and audio-video combination.

These are its general characteristics. If we explore deeply, the characteristics of children's literature can be analyzed from two aspects, one is stylistic characteristics, and the other is aesthetic characteristics. Stylistic features are as follows:

Children's literature is the enlightenment literature that opens the mind;

(2) Children's literature is simply oral literature;

(3) Children's literature is interesting and happy.

The aesthetic features are as follows:

① In the reaction life, there is a cheerful, bright and vigorous beauty;

There is an innocent beauty in expressing feelings, that is, innocent beauty and naive beauty;

There is a sense of humor and absurdity in expressing children's interests.

As can be seen from the above, children's literature has its unique beauty, which is what distinguishes it from childhood literature and adolescent literature, and because of this, children's literature is the most vivid, lovely, distinctive and dynamic branch of children's literature.