The Treasure Collector

A funny, quirky tale of friendship, values, and stuff, featuring a remarkable and evolving friendship between a racoon and a starfish

Every night, Reginald goes on the hunt. He loves stuff. All kinds of stuff. To us, it might look like junk, but to Reginald, it's treasure! His most valued treasure of all is a label maker—how else is he supposed to identify each item in his collection?

And then one night, Reginald finds something very strange. It feels squishy and strong at the same time. It’s not a toy. It’s not a cookie. (BLEH! Definitely not a cookie.) It must be junk. But is it? When the label maker stops working, Reginal discovers that some things aren’t things—they might even be friends—and sometimes what we think is junk turns out to be incredibly valuable.David Zeltser loves hanging out with and writing about all kinds of animals, big and small. He’s the author of Codzilla; Stinker; The Universe Ate My Homework; Lug: Dawn of the Ice Age; and Lug: Blast from the North. His first picture book was Ninja Baby, and his most recent, The Night Library, is being adapted into a musical. He’s also a screenwriter. David cofounded the free after-school Word Lab for kids in Santa Cruz, California, where he lives with his wife, daughter, and their beloved dog, Annie. He’s thrilled to be making The Treasure Collector with his close two-legged friend, Ben.

Benjamin Arthur is an Emmy Award-winning animator. His clients have included TED, NPR, Radiolab, and Freakonomics. He has lectured for the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators and won the National Academy of Sciences Communication Award. Ben’s animations have gone viral and garnered millions of views on YouTube and Vimeo. The Treasure Collector is his first picture book.