The best way to punctuate the bolded portion of the sentence is “Do you see the kite floating in the air?” the father asked the young child.
Explanation:
Simple and double quotation marks are used with different porpuses. First of all, they can be used to quote a book, a person or any kind of source. When we have a quote within a quote we use double marks for the principal quote and simple marks for the inner quote, this can also be done the other way around. SImple marks are used to emphasize specialized vocabulary. This case repeats something that someone else said earlier that's the reason why double marks are the best option to present the phrase.
