THE KITE FIGHTERS by Linda Sue Park

In Seoul, Korea there lived two boys. The older one's name was Kee-sup and the younger one, Young-sup. At New Year's day Kee-sup got a kite that had eyes. After hours of trying to fly it, Kee-sup finally gave up and gave the kite to Young-sup so that he could try it. Young-sup got it in the air without any effort. This begins the story of The Kite Fighters. This is the basic story: Young-sup gets so good at flying kites that he attracts the young king of China, a boy of about eleven years old. The king commands Young-sup to speak to him as he does to his brother and they form a strong friendship. Soon Kee-sup joins in with them and also speak to the king as a brother. The king get interested in flying a kite and decides he will participate in the kite festival on the next New Year's day. Kee-sup is determined to let the king win, but the king soon realizes that if he flies his own kite, the people will let him win on purpose. So the king let's Young-sup fly the kite for him. New Year's day is in a couple of days and Kee-sup gets a great idea: he will put a clay jar in a bag and crush the jar with the wooden mallet until the jar is finely smashed. Then with glue from rice, he will coat the string of the kite with the shattered clay to make the string able to cut the other opponents' string easily, so that the king's kite will win. At the festival, the king announces that the kite competition is starting. Young-sup gets into the line. When it is his turn, he immediately starts doing a see-saw pattern with his kite against the opponents' strings to cut them. Finally he gets to the champion of the last two years' kite competitions. He gets nervous at the idea of loosing; so nervous that his arms and legs begin to shake and he fears that his see-saw pattern will not work. After a while of fighting with the champion, Young-sup gets so weak that he can barely stand up anymore. Finally he falls out of the boundaries, right as he cuts the champion's string. The judges have a hard time deciding whether he fell out of the boundaries before he cut the string or after. But the champion declares him the winner because he felt that the string was cut before. Young-sup is the winner! The king closes the kite festival by giving the winners kites that have burning lanterns attached to them. All the palace guards pull out the same kind of kites from their garments, light the lanterns and launch them into the sky. Soon the darkness of the sky is lit up with brilliant lights. Young-sup wonders which one is his. He gives the string a gentle tug and up in the sky warm light dodges a little bit, and Young-sup is sure that that one is his. And he feels happy.