A children's book is being taken off the shelves after Scholastic, the biggest children's book publisher, failed to put Israel on the map in the book.
"Thea Stilton and the Blue Scarab Hunt," a book in the popular Geronimo Stilton children's series (which was translated from Italian and published by Scholastic in 2012), does not include the country Israel on the map, reported Times of Israel. The book tells the story of a group of investigative journalists involved in a Egypt treasure hunt.
Adina Golombek, a Jerusalem resident who immigrated to Israel from Canada last year, was shocked to see her new country missing from the map in the book when she was reading the story with her 7-year-old.
"I wanted to show my son where we lived in the Middle East, but it didn't say Israel on the map; instead it said Jordan," Golombek told The Times of Israel. "I showed him the problem and drew in the border of where Israel is today."
Scholastic released a statement on the flawed map:
Scholastic is immediately stopping shipment on this title, revising the map, and going back to reprint. We regret the omission which was in the original version of the book published in Italy and was translated by our company for English language distribution. Thank you for your patience and understanding in this matter.
Since the error was discovered last year the maps were corrected and the books were reprinted.
Although Scholastic corrected their error after leaving Israel off the map, erasing countries off the map in the Middle East is nothing new.
A recent study by Israeli and Palestinian researchers found that almost all Palestinian textbooks failed to mention Israel by name in their maps, reported Times of Israel. Israel is not innocent either, as they also omit the names of the Palestinian Territories in 87 percent of their textbooks.
