Travel Books: The best of Argentina and traveling with children

"The Rough Guide to Travel With Babies & Young Children," (Rough Guides, $15.99). Author Fawzia Rasheed de Francisco is an exuberant advocate of traveling with children. "The slower pace that children demand ensures you really get under the skin of the places you visit," she argues, "and having kids along makes a noticeable difference to how people interact with you."

The whole adventure usually depends on how the children are coping with travel, and this book's mission is to ensure that parents are fully prepared for the pitfalls.

The first third of this book is a carousel of answers to pretrip questions, from what to pack to what to wear.

Getting to a destination with kids in tow is the next challenge, one that can be smoothed over if parents figure where to sit on a plane, how to keep kids clean and the best ways to perform a dozen other maneuvers while on the move. Once on the ground, a family's vacation is enhanced if the parents know how to childproof a hotel room, deal with laundry and meet a host of challenges ranging from diaper rash to cultural shock.

In the end, this guide amply makes the case that, with proper preparation, globe-trotting can have a transformative effect on the whole family.

A child's "natural capacity to stop, be absorbed and play tends to cross over to adults," argues the author, "and this paves the way for some truly fantastic moments together."

"Moon Argentina," (Avalon, $21.95). Moon handbooks aim to cover a destination in exhaustive detail, providing plenty of background as well as personal advice from authoritative authors. At more than 650 pages, this new edition by Wayne Bernhardson, who owns an apartment in Buenos Aires, is no exception. He maps out the touristic highlights of this far-flung nation — from Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia in the south to the pampas and Iguacu Falls in the north. Argentina's worldly capital, Buenos Aires, known as the "Paris of the South," receives its own chapter.

Beyond these basics, Bernhardson presents several trips, each with a theme: scenic and cultural highlights; history, native art and architecture; Argentine vineyards; and a safari though the nation's parklands and wilderness areas.

Argentina is a tango of attractions, but this guide knows all the steps.