Crowdfunding: Connecting Creators and Patrons

Hello,
I have been a member for quite a while, but up to now I never posted projects of my own, I'd like the community's input on this.

I am a cultural mediator for China, and I work a lot with schools. Recently  teachers keep asking me about Chinese classical poetry: info on authors, translation of poems, suggestions and materials for using Chinese poetry in class.

And that set me thinking, since as far as I know there aren't any collections of translated Chinese poetry aimed at children over here.

I keep visualizing a book like this:

Front matter: an introduction to the Chinese poetry of the 'golden age' (definitely Tang, possibly with something about the Song too), a pronunciation table and a short bio for each of the included poets (all in a 'register' that could be good both for teachers / parents and for older kids, keeping things simple never hurts).

The poems: first in a 'one page per line' format. with the original Chinese, a transcription  and the translation, like this (the transcription will have the tones marked):

危樓高百尺﹐

wei lou gao bai chi
A tower of one hundred feet

With an illustration portraying the image in the line, then the whole poem on a single page.

I have most of the materials for the front matter already and I'll need just to select the poems and translate them (some I have already because of previous projects).

At the start I thought about doing an ebook in Italian, but a version in English wouldn't be that much more work (again, much of the front matter I have in both languages) and offering both an ebook and a paper edition would be a dream.

I wonder wheter crowdfunding could be a viable option, for starters I'll need an editor for the English version and an illustrator (I'd love something in watercolor, not aping classical Chinese paintings but with a bit of that flavour), and hopefully enough to cover a trial print run.
Perks could be : a copy of the e-book, a copy of the paper book (if we make enough), the possibility to sponsor a specific illustration and have the patron's name listed in the credit, or that plus a print of the sponsored illustration,...

At the moment, though what I'll need most would be an interested editor, illustrator and, maybe, publisher/printer to have an idea of the sum needed.

Opinions, please?

Crossposted to my own journal