I'm not really advocating burning anything.

At any rate, your world is very real, but my issue isn't "hacks vs geniuses," because we both know that a hack can show up in any medium, whether it's some lame corporate franchise book or in a grassroots book. I'm not against anything mainstream necessarily. Some of my favorite things are about as mainstream as it gets. My concern, though, is with the lack of possibility of a new book being able to be at the top of everything. If you look at the sales charts for Goodnight Moon, you see a gradual rise, and this is due to word-of-mouth popularity there. But I'm not really seeing newer children's books being cherished on the same level for their actual objective qualities.

But then again, I'm not really old enough to be messing around with newer children's books, nor do I have any kids. If you have any examples that prove me wrong, I'd be open to hear them.