Kite-Flying

Kites are often a prominent feature in children's books. Yesterday, I could not for the life of me understand why. Kite-flying is SO DIFFICULT. Cal and I (both intelligent twenty-year old college students) spent maybe 45 minutes trying to get these kites off the ground and over our heads. Mostly, they hovered around the area of our torso before nose-diving into the grass. After many exasperating attempts, we chocked up our failure to poor kite design by the manufacturers and held our heads high on the drive home. After all, it wasn't our lack of awesomeness that prevented those kites from flying, right? 

So I pose this dilemma to you: are there any tips and tricks to kite-flying or do you just need a quality kite with the right aerodynamic design to make anything interesting happen?