The Traveler — Daren Simkin

A charming fable that evokes a life lesson we would all do well to learn: living and loving are time well spent.

Once, there was a boy named Charlie. He had a pretty nice life . . . but it wasn't perfect. So one day he packed up all his time--all his round, squishy years and square, mushy months, down to every itsy-bitsy second--in his suitcase and locked it up safe, said goodbye to his parents, and set off to find something better to spend his time on. Charlie traveled all over the world in search of the perfect thing to make him happy, but that turned out to be much harder to find than he thought. In the meantime, his itsybitsy seconds and silky, smooth hours and raggedy days ticked away and vanished, and soon they added up to weeks and months and years--so that once Charlie stopped his traveling and realized what he really needed out of life, it was almost too late. Almost.