Mother Carey, a Bostonian widow, and her three children move to Maine. Postmaster Osh Popham helps them move into a run-down old house and fixes it up for them. It's not entirely uninhabited, though; the owner, Mr. Hamilton, is a mysterious character away in Europe, but Osh assures them he won't mind their living there, since he won't be coming home for a long time yet. The children and a cousin who comes to live with them have various adventures before an unexpected visitor shows up
Summer Magic is a 1963 American musical film directed by James Neilson, and starring Hayley Mills, Burl Ives, and Dorothy McGuire in a story about an early 1900s Boston widow and her children taking up residence in a small town in Maine. The film was based on the novel Mother Carey's Chickens by Kate Douglas Wiggin. It was the fourth of six films that Mills appeared in for Disney, and the young actress received a Golden Globe nomination for her work. While reviews of the film were mostly positive, Mills herself later criticized it as "the worst".
