If children are not present in most travel literature--precisely because the genre has most typically been the domain of solitary male travelers who are escaping domestic obligation, routine, the familiar, and the family--they nevertheless are an integral part of the genre. The traveler is in many ways a child, an innocent abroad. Traveler writers enact again and again the archetypal journey of the child's leaving home. They are often in the position of children, like students learning a new language. Unfamiliar with foreign customs, currency, or terrain, they can be gullible and easily led, dependent on the kindness of strangers and vulnerable to parasites and touts who hang around train stations and hotels. Since the chance for genuine travel is rare for children, childhood is a time of vicarious travel--through reading and fantasy. The seeds of the desire to travel are sown in childhood. The literary return to the idealized and instinctual realm of childhood parallels many journeys of modern travel writers away from the industrial world to the pastoral, including D. H. Lawrence and Bruce Chatwin. Other writers such as Paul Theroux and Graham Greene are more skeptical of the idyllic vision of childhood and travel. (Contains 12 primary references to travel literature.) (TB)