The term children's literature criticism includes both generalist discussions of the relationship between children's literature and literary theory and literary analyses of a specific works of children's literature. Some academics consider young adult literature to be included under the rubric of 'children's literature.'
Nearly every school of theoretical thought has been applied to children's literature, most commonly reader response (Chambers 1980) and new criticism. However, other schools have been applied in controversial and influential ways, including Orientalism (Nodelman 1992), feminist theory (Paul 1987), postmodernism (Stevenson 1994), structuralism (Neumeyer 1977), post-structuralism (Rose, 1984, Lesnik-Oberstein, 1994) and many others.