I am going to get a children's story published… PII

Dear readers, it has been two hours since I last confessed…

Perhaps writing what I am going to do first is a good way of actually doing it.  After I wrote my last blog I began researching publishing children's books.  This is what I found:

“So You Want to Publish a Children’s Book: Advice from an Insider” by Victoria Fanning
Some words of wisdom on submitting your work.  Most importantly it answered my question of whether or not it needed to be illustrated.  The answer was an overwhelming NO!

"How to format your manuscript for a children's book" by Cynthea Lui

A step by step guide to how exactly to format your children's book for submission.  Typical double-spaced times new roman nothing fancy.

I also found two three publishing houses that are taking unsolicited manuscripts for children's book:

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Boyd Mills Press
Orca Book Pulbishers (Canada Only)

As well as a good list of others that aren't quite what I was looking for but still good to know

So, I have formatted my story as per Cynthea's advice, stopped worrying about the artwork.  I now have two other things to do.

Get someone to look over my manuscript for mistakes/grammer etc. and find out if I can submit to both of these places.  I have heard that some PHs only want you to submit only to them.  

For the record, if you are going to take 3+ months to get back to the submitter (which I completely understand) I don't think it's fair that they have to wait for an answer/non-answer before submitting to someone else.  I know that you believe someone is wasting your time if they submit to multiple places and may decide not to go with you but it is only the time it takes to read/think/write a letter as opposed to three months of waiting.

Here is my goal.  To have my manuscript in the mail to someone by Friday!  Luckily I have two great editors by way of my wife who is an elementary school teacher and my friend Allison who has an English degree.