Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	The Kite Rider
	Author:	McCaughrean, Geraldine
	Date Published:	2002
	Genre:	Historical Fiction
	Grade Level:	5 - 8
	Booktalker:	Bonnie Phinney

Booktalk:
THE KITE RIDER BY GERALDINE MCCAUGHREAN Up and up the wind drew him Haoyou looked about him and saw the whole World beneath him. And it was his. He could breathe! Today Haoyou was a kite, a windhover riding on spread wings. It wasn’t always so The year is 1281. China is ruled by the foreign emperor, Kublai Khan, whose Mongol warriors have just conquered the Sung Dynasty. Haoyou prepares to say goodbye to his father, a crew member of a cargo ship. But, first, he watches the testing of the wind, which involves strapping a man to a huge kite and seeing if it flies straight up (a good omen for the voyage) or at an angle (a foretelling of danger). He’s excited, like the rest of the crowd, anticipating…but then he stares in horror … the man strapped to the kite is his father. He watches, as his father becomes a speck in the distant sky, then returns, lifeless, to earth. An angry and dejected Haoyou returns to his widowed mother, determined to prevent the evil first mate, Di Chou, who sent his father skyward, from marrying his mother. To prevent the wedding, Haoyou signs a very drunk Di Chou aboard a different ship and volunteers himself as the new wind tester so the ship can leave before the first mate wakes up. His courage catches the eye of the great Miao, master of the Jade Circus, who offers Haoyou the amazing chance to change his life – by becoming a kite rider! All Haoyou had to do was to get strapped onto a beautiful scarlet-and-gold kite and soar perilously among the clouds entertaining the awestruck crowds below. To add to the show, his cousin, Mipeng, serves as his link to the sky spirits. As you might imagine, his first flight for the circus is as terrifying as it is exhilarating: the boy’s continued survival depends as much on extraordinary luck as on the equally extraordinary skills he begins to develop. As the circus moves north, north toward the home of the great Kublai Khan himself, his death defying flights enable ever-more novel feats. But what about the duties that bind Haoyou to his family, especially to his widowed mother? Is the Great Miao all that he seems, or could he be using Haoyou in a treacherous plot? Soar with the The Kite Rider by Geraldine McCaughrean