John Reynolds Gardiner was born on December 6, 1944, in Los Angeles, California. His father was Glenn N. a teacher and his mother was Rachel Gardiner, she was also a teacher. John married Gloria A. Padilla. She is a house wife. They were married on May 6, 1978.

Their children's names are Carrie, Alicia, and Danielle Gardiner. John went to the University of California, Los Angeles. He lives in Huntington Beach, California.

He wrote the books Stone Fox, Top Secret, and General Butter Fingers. He likes the book Stone Fox the best. He is working on the book The Last Secret.

In high school John was told he would never make it in college English because his grammar and spelling were so poor. He was always a nonreader. He read his first novel Exodus, at age nineteen. His brother put him in a writing class at age twenty-eight. He sold his first book six years later.

His book Stone Fox has sold 5,000 copies a month and has been translated into three different languages. It has sold over 150,000 copies and won the 1987 Maud Hart Lovelace Award and the George G. Stone Center for Children's Book Recognition of Merit Award for the same year. It was named a Notable Book of 1980 by the American Library Association and was made into a 1987 NBC television movie.

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Last Updated: May 9, 2001

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