The Pursuit Of Poetry And Drama

As a part of children's literature, picturebooks originated from western countries. It's a kind of narrative art which communicate with comprehensive means. In China, the germination of picturebooks can be traced back to the May 4th Movement. But not until 21st century did the Picturebook-Era actually come to China. The quantity of publication of Chinese original picturebooks increases in these years and there have been a lot of excellent works which are valuable to appreciate as well.This paper chooses aesthetic characteristics as the perspective of the research. The study finds that there are two different kinds of picturebooks which are poetic and dramati. The style of Chinese original picturebooks changed from the poetic pursuit to the dramatic on the whole. Basic on the textual close reading, this paper classifies and concludes how these two kinds of picturebooks explore the ways to express poetically and dramatically. Furthermore, the paper analyzes the reasons of the two different choices of aesthetic character in picturebooks.Poetic picturebooks often pay more attention to express emotion and create beautiful atmosphere rather than telling stories. The literacy rhyme of poetic picturebooks tends to be harmonious, and the expression tends to be very concise, so they are graceful and implicit, mild and romantic. Dramatic picturebooks are good at narrative. Fierce conflicts, interesting suspense and sudden changes can easily be found in a dramatic picturebook. What's more, the texts usually pay more attention to actions, and the pictures look more dynamic. All of these make the stories in dramatic picturebooks more attractive to readers.The study also finds that, it's the authors' attitude of their creation and the aesthetic pursuit that lead to different choices of aesthetic characteristics in picturebooks. To be specific, if the author chooses to look back upon his childhood or tries to realize the aesthetic pursuit of beauty and harmony during the creation, the work will be more poetic. On the contrary, if the author chooses to think and play as a child or tries to realize the aesthetic pursuit of funny and interesting during the creation, the work will be more dramatic.The perspective of this study also includes an international view. By comparison with other nations, the study finds a way for Chinese original picturebooks to continue the exploration in aesthetic aspect. Chinese authors should try to enrich the poetic quality by adding philosophical thinking, to enrich the dramatic quality by learning from postmodernism, and to find more possibilities through the mix of poetic quality and dramatic quality.