WANTED: Illustrator for Childrens Book

I'm going to let you in on one of my dreams in life - to be a published author. I know you must be thinking that being an author, being published, is the most self-absorbed, egotistical goal one might have. I tend to agree. There's nothing more satisfying than seeing your name printed on/in a manuscript.

I've been published once before. I was taking a Creative Writing course at St. Thomas University and I wrote a perfect Sonnet - 14 lines, iambic pentameter, rhyming couplet at the end. I sent it away to a small poetry journal and they accepted it. I still remember the pride I felt when I got the journal in the mail and saw my little poem there in print! My ego went sky-high. Unfortunately, that proved to be the end of my publishing days and one of the last poems I ever worked on. However, another poem that I wrote for that class was a children's story in the form of a poem. It was 16 stanzas long, four lines per stanza, about a boy whose mother makes him an assortment of noodles for lunch. I have always wanted to turn it into a children's book, but I can't draw to save my life and I need a great illustrator to take on the project.

Anyway, I know it's probably never going to happen. It's very expensive to self-publish and I have mouths to feed. I don't know of any publishing company that is willing to take a gamble on an unknown author. So it might have to remain a dream... at least, for now.