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.
As children's literature criticism started developing as an academic discipline (roughly in the past thirty years or so, see historical overviews by Hunt (1991) and McGillis (1997)), children's literature criticism became involved with wider work in literary theory and cultural studies.
Feminist children's literature critics such as Lissa Paul (1987) therefore try to work out how boys and girls read differently, for instance.
Stephens and McCallum (1998) discuss the intertextuality of children's literature, while Rose explores the identifying characteristics of the genre.