Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe have now been married for fifteen years and are busily raising their six high-spirited children in the village of Glen St. Mary. But when a widowed minister, John Meredith, comes to town with his own four kids in tow, village life starts to get very complicated indeed. Together, the Blythe and Meredith children hatch schemes in their private hideout - a hollow they call Rainbow Valley. There, they plot to rescue a young runaway named Mary Vance and conspire to keep a pet rooster from the soup pot. But the children's most important scheme involves poor John Meredith himself, who has surprised everyone around him by falling in love once more. When a promise made years ago threatens to derail the widowed minister's plans for the future, the Meredith children - with the help of their new friends, the Blythes - decide to take matters into their own hands.