You've written a story your family enjoys or painted some illustrations that your friends tell you are wonderful. Maybe you read your story out loud to a group of children, and they liked it. Do not rush out and make 20 copies of your work and send them off to all the publishers you can think of.
Publishers get thousands of manuscript submissions a year, and almost as many art samples.
Some specialize in one genre or another, and won't even look at something that isn't targeted at their needs. You can waste a lot of time and patience if you don't know about these and other pitfalls. For far more detail, consult my book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Children's Books . First, before you go any further, take a minute to think about your motivations. Be aware that the odds are against you, that only a few of the thousands of manuscripts a children's book publisher receives in a year will ever be published.