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If you’re making plans to visit another culture with children, here’s a multi-genre multitude of resources, from guides for family travel to a pre-teen’s memoir of moving to Africa. Books, sites, lists… something to inspire and ease your travel with children and enrich their multicultural upbringing in the best possible way: experiencing new territory for themselves. Happy travels!

David Elliot Cohen’s One Year Off: Leaving It All Behind for a Round-the-World Journey With Our Children, in the Traveler’s Tales series, provides an ambitious starting point. Annotated travel-related children’s book lists, organized by country, await you at Travel for Kids. Along with books for young travelers, the Goodlittletraveler website suggests helpful advice about traveling with children. The Pennywhistle Traveling with Kids Book offers vehicular orientation for parents and kids traveling by car, plane, train or boat.

In Alison Lester’s Are We There Yet? 8-year-old Gracie narrates a family vacation all around Australia. Headed to the Caribbean? Here’s a book list. Along with many Fodors guides for kids traveling in Europe and U.S., Madallie: A Children’s Travel Store stocks an around-the-world adventure guide. Exploring Chinatown: A Children’s Guide to Chinese Culture is a great guide to any Chinatown, wherever in the world you’re headed. Four Corners Publishing puts out YA novels for and about young travelers, including guides to Sydney, Mexico, and Israel. In Learning to Swim in Swaziland by Nila K. Leigh, an American 11-year-old describes her life in Africa, where she moved when she was 8.

Introducing young children to international art classics in preparation for travel? Art Up Close makes helpful suggestions. And Bob Raczka’s Where in the World? takes Alighiero e Boetti’s tapestry map of the world as starting point for a world tour of great art–good fun for armchair and hit-the-road young travelers alike.

A big fat scandal just exploded over at ABC News and the Nixon Institute.

The French academic Alexis Debat consulted with both places as a Middle Eastern expert, and allegedly faked a number of interviews he did with American leaders over the last few years.

He was recently fired by ABC when they couldn't verify his credentials. According to ABC reporters, Debat blames one fabricated interview on a Chicago journalist named Rob Sherman, a freelancer living at an allegedly non-existent address.

Potentially, these imaginary interviews and fabricated sources could have been influencing American policy in the Middle East. The Washington Post sums up how murky experts like him are becoming respected, dangerous sources. A lesson about the power of your ideas:

"Debat's career seemed to be flourishing in the well-trafficked intersection of academia and the media. He directs the terrorism and national security program from a downtown office at the Nixon Center, set up by the former president shortly before his death. He wrote for its magazine, the National Interest, whose honorary chairman is Henry Kissinger."

In related, crazy news, disgraced non-fiction writer James Frey has found a new career as a novelist, landing a deal just yesterday.

Publishing Spotted collects the best of what's around on writing blogs on any given day. Feel free to send tips and suggestions to your fearless editor: jason [at] thepublishingspot.com.