Poppy and the Lost Kite

Poppy was running down the hill with her red kite, and the kite would not fly.

"Up, up, up!" she said. But the kite only flopped in the grass.

Poppy wanted a friend. She had just moved to the house at the bottom of the hill. Nobody here knew her name. She thought a kite in the sky might make someone wave.

She ran again. The kite bumped and dragged. Then a gust of wind caught it, and whoosh, it jumped into the air. It rose over the fence, over the pond, and over a tall, crooked tree.

Then it stopped. The string went tight. The kite was stuck in the branches.

Poppy pulled. Nothing. She pulled harder. Still nothing.

"Please come down," she said to the tree.

The tree said nothing back. But something under it said, "Oh, no."

A boy sat on the ground with a bucket. His name was Charlie, and he was filling the bucket with fallen acorns. "I'm collecting these for the squirrels," he said. "They have a lot of work to do before winter."

"My kite is stuck," said Poppy.

Charlie looked up. "That's a good kite."

Poppy tried jumping. Charlie tried throwing an acorn at it. The acorn went plink off a branch and landed on Poppy's head.

"Sorry!" said Charlie.

Poppy giggled. Then she looked at the bucket, and then at the kite, and she had an idea.

"Charlie, can you stand on the bucket? Upside down?"

He turned it over and climbed up. He was still too short. So Poppy held the string tight and walked in a slow circle around the trunk. The kite swung loose, and it tipped, and it slid out of the branches.

Down it floated, right into Charlie's hands.

"Got it!" he said.

Poppy gave him the string. "You can hold it first."

Charlie ran. Poppy ran beside him. The red kite lifted, and above them the acorns rattled in the bucket, plink, plink, plink, all the way down the hill.