You continue to amaze me. Seeing the illustrations all put together like this is blowing me away. To answer a few of your questions in no particular order, yes, yes I definitely think that this should be published. Kickstarter is a fine route to go but you don't actually need to raise funds in advance unless you are planning on ordering an actual print run. Way easier to just use one of the many quality print on demand services - no upfront costs and if you use lulu.com your customers can often actually get the book cheaper (using Lulu.com coupon codes) than they could have gotten if you went the print run route. And of course this eliminates all the headaches of a kickstarter. I have seen too many well-intentioned friends screw up kickstarters royally. I have personally self-published from POD and it was super easy.

That being said I don't think you would have much of a problem finding a publisher for this either if you want to go that route. My sister is signed with Harper-Collins so let me know if you want a contact there.

You are still pretty early on in this project but as you get closer to completion - and assuming you don't want to go the real publisher route - my two biggest tips are to work with someone who has experience as an editor to tighten down the text and somebody who has experience with layout for the text layout and integration into the illustrations. You will be able to make a kick-ass book yourself without assistance but for the text editing in particular your final product will really be improved if you go through the editing process with an editor.