The Summer Birds is a children's novel by British writer Penelope Farmer, published in 1962 by Chatto & Windus, and receiving a Carnegie Medal commendation.

Whilst working as a teacher for the London County Council Education Department, she was approached by editor Margaret K. McElderry of Harcourt Brace to write a children's novel.

[3] The main settings of the book are a small village school in the South Downs in southern England, and Aviary Hall, the girls' home.

[4] Charlotte and Emma Makepeace are children living with their grandfather, Elijah, in a country house in the South Downs in southern England.

The children decide that this indeed is too high a price to pay, and all decline to travel with the boy, with the exception of one girl, who has neither parents, nor a happy life to return to.

Hugh Crago reviewed the book in Signal, writing, "The Summer Birds is Peter Pan pared down, the whimsy, the sentimentality and the extravagant pantomime mythmaking cut away, leaving the essential core of genuine wonder..."[6] In 1963, Marion R. Hewitt reviewed the book in an article about Penelope Farmer in The Junior Bookshelf.

The description of the Downs at night has an ethereal poetry and the sadness of the farewell [when the nameless boy returns to his island home] is delicately and truthfully shown.

But just as truthfully the joy of living, happiness and excitement of childhood is shown as the children fight and clown their way through the summer.