440 colouring pages created
11 stories
The sounds of destiNAT
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11 NOVEMBER · POLISH INDEPENDENCE DAY
Open an old atlas with Nubo, Fira and Orumi. Meet the people whose small and great efforts helped Poland regain its independence.
Read together · around ages 6–10
destiNAT · 1795 — 1919
Four adventures for reading together and discovering Polish history. For children aged around 6–10, and younger children with an adult’s help.
The Polish lands in 1795 and Italy in 1797
Poland’s name disappears from an old atlas. Nubo, Fira and Orumi travel to 1795, then to Italy, where a remarkable song is being written. They discover what a map cannot show.
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The United States in 1916
Outside a concert hall, Hania waits with a letter from her aunt. The friends meet Paderewski and discover how music can help people far from home. Orumi wants to lend a hand too.
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Warsaw on 10 and 11 November 1918
At a Warsaw printing shop, news mingles with rumours. It is November 1918, and Stefan cannot sit still. Nubo decides to write down only what they can check.
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Warsaw on 26 January 1919 and 11 November today
Mrs Zofia is going to cast her vote, and Orumi wonders what having a voice means. In snowy Warsaw, the friends learn about elections. Back in their own time, ordinary but important tasks await.
Read the storyThe characters and their conversations are fictional. The adult reader’s note explains the historical background.
History in your colours
From an open atlas to celebrating together. Forty pages with Nubo, Fira and Orumi, with captions and short historical explanations.
40 pages · printable PDF
Language edition · 13
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These stories combine the fictional adventures of destiNAT characters with a real historical background. Antek, his grandmother, Hania, the printer Leon, Stefan, Zofia and Zosia are fictional. The dialogue of Józef Wybicki and Ignacy Jan Paderewski is a literary invention, not quotation from documents. The concert is an imagined scene set during Paderewski’s actual relief work.
The third partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth took place in 1795. In July 1797, Józef Wybicki wrote the Song of the Polish Legions in Italy, later known as Mazurek Dąbrowskiego. The exact day of its composition and first performance is uncertain, so the story gives no precise day.
During the First World War, Paderewski organised relief and supported Polish independence, including in the United States. Poland’s regaining of independence is not attributed to him alone.
Józef Piłsudski arrived in Warsaw on 10 November 1918. The next day, the Regency Council handed him military authority and supreme command of its Polish troops. Regaining independence was a process. The date 11 November symbolises it; it does not mark the settling of every border or the end of all fighting.
The decree of 28 November 1918 granted women voting rights in Poland. The first elections to the Constituent Sejm took place on 26 January 1919 in areas where they could then be held. The electoral law gave voting rights to citizens aged 21 and over regardless of sex, subject to its conditions and exclusions. The story depicts a fictional Warsaw family.
Materials for checking the historical background