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NCERT Solutions Poorvi Chapter 5 The Kites — Let us discuss

Book page 143 & 144 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.
Read the poem silently. As you read, mark the given statements as True or False. 1. The child is looking at the kites. 2. The kites look like birds of different colours. 3. It was a rainy day. 4. The child wants to be like a kite. 5. The child wishes to climb on a kite. 6. The kite is made of cloth and plastic. 7. The child wants to ride the kite. 8. The child knows they would have fun. 9. The child wants to look at the kite from a rooftop. 10. The child would like to look at people down below. 11. The child knows that the people would stare.
Answer

Every answer can be proved from a line of the poem. Six are True and five are False.

No.StatementT/FLine that proves it
1The child is looking at the kites.True“Up in the air / See the kites fly”
2The kites look like birds of different colours.True“Like coloured birds / In the wind-whipped sky.”
3It was a rainy day.FalseThe sky is “wind-whipped”, not rainy. Rain is never mentioned — and kites are flown on dry, windy days.
4The child wants to be like a kite.FalseThe child wants to be “small / And light as air” so as to ride a kite — not to become one.
5The child wishes to climb on a kite.True“I would climb on a kite / And sail up there.”
6The kite is made of cloth and plastic.False“Then I would drift upon / The paper wings” — the kite is made of paper.
7The child wants to ride the kite.True“climb on a kite / And sail up there”; “drift upon / The paper wings”
8The child knows they would have fun.True“What fun it would be / To look right down”
9The child wants to look at the kite from a rooftop.FalseThe opposite is true — the child wants to look down at the rooftops from the kite: “Over the park / And the rooftops of town.”
10The child would like to look at people down below.True“The people below / Would stand and stare”
11The child knows that the people would stare.True“Would stand and stare, / And wish they were me”
Tip: Statements 4 and 9 are the traps. Read them slowly against the poem — in both cases the poem says something close to, but not the same as, the statement.
Q2.
Complete the following sentences. The poet says that the kites are like coloured birds – See the kites fly / Like coloured birds in the sky. The kites have been compared to b __ __ __ __ because they ______________.
Answer

The kites have been compared to b i r d s because they fly high in the sky in many bright colours, just as birds do.

Name the device: This is a simile — a comparison of two different things using the word like or as. Here the word is like: “Like coloured birds”. A kite and a bird are quite different things, but both are small, coloured shapes moving freely high above us, and that one likeness is enough to build the picture.
Other ways to finish the blank: “…because they float high above us like living things”, or “…because they are colourful and seem to have wings.” Any reason that names a real likeness is correct.
Q3.
The child wishes to be like air – I wish I were small / And as light as air. The child wishes to be as l __ __ __ t as __ __ __. The child wishes this to be able to c __ __ m __ on a kite and fly.
Answer

The child wishes to be as l i g h t as a i r. The child wishes this to be able to c l i m b on a kite and fly.

The poem's own words are: “I wish I were small / And light as air, / I would climb on a kite / And sail up there.”

Why ‘light as air’? This is the second simile of the poem, made with as … as. A paper kite can lift nothing heavier than a breeze, so the only way a child could ride one is by weighing almost nothing. The comparison is not decoration — it is the exact condition the wish depends on.
Q4.
Do you think that the use of simile in this poem helps us imagine better when we read the poem? Share your thoughts with your teacher and classmates.
Answer

Yes — the similes are what make the poem easy to picture.

A kite is only paper, sticks and thread. But the moment the poet writes “Like coloured birds”, you stop seeing paper and start seeing a flock of living, moving colour in the sky. And “light as air” does the same for the child: we all know exactly how heavy air is — it weighs nothing — so in three words we understand precisely what the child is wishing for.

SimileWhat it comparesWhat we suddenly see or feel
“Like coloured birds”kites — birdsMany bright shapes moving alive in the sky, not flat pieces of paper
“light as air”the child — airWeightlessness, floating, a body a kite could actually carry
Say it in one sentence: “A simile explains something new by holding it beside something we already know, and that is why the picture forms in our mind at once.”
Q5.
Find a set of words from the poem that begin with the same consonant sound. Stanza 1 — Which consonant sound do both words begin with? Stanza 3 — Which consonant sound do both words begin with? This is called alliteration. For example, big bright blue bag, funny fan, etc. Create 4 other sets of words using alliteration.
Answer

Stanza 1: the words are wind-whipped (“In the wind-whipped sky”). The consonant sound both begin with is /w/.

Stanza 3: the words are wild wind (“That the wild wind sings”). Again the sound is /w/. In the same stanza you can also point to songs … sings, which share the sound /s/.

What alliteration does here: repeating the /w/ sound makes you purse your lips and blow slightly as you read — so the line itself sounds like wind. The poet is not just describing wind; she is making you hear it.

Four sets of your own:

No.Alliterative setRepeated sound
1silver stars shine softly/s/
2the busy black bees buzz/b/
3round red rooftops/r/
4the merry monkey munched a mango/m/
Careful: alliteration is about the sound, not the letter. Kite and circle both have a /k/ or /s/ sound that does not match their spelling, and wind and whipped alliterate although one begins with ‘w’ and the other with ‘wh’.
Q6.
In the last stanza, the two words that the poet repeats are __________, __________ to tell us that the kite is flying __ __ __ y high.
Answer

In the last stanza, the two words that the poet repeats are High, high to tell us that the kite is flying v e r y high.

The line is: “High, high in the air.”

Why repeat instead of saying ‘very high’? Saying a word twice makes the reader pause on it and stretches the sound out, so the height feels greater. It also ends the poem on the same word it opened with — the poem begins “Up in the air” and closes “High, high in the air”, bringing the child's daydream full circle.
Q7.
Study each stanza and underline the rhyming words from the end of each line. Also, circle the end words in the stanzas that do not rhyme.
Answer

In every stanza only the second and fourth lines rhyme. The first and third line endings are the ones to circle.

StanzaUnderline (rhyming pair)Circle (do not rhyme)
1fly — skyair, birds
2air — theresmall, kite
3wings — singsupon, songs
4down — townbe, park
5stare — airbelow, me

So the rhyme scheme of every stanza is a b c b.

Tip: Rhyme is about sound, not spelling. Air and there are spelt quite differently but end in the same sound, so they rhyme. Songs and upon look as if they might rhyme, but they do not.
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