John Lawrence Peterson (February 10, 1924 – November 30, 2002) was an American author of children's books.
Peterson was also the author of The Secret Hide-Out, a popular Scholastic Books title in the 1960s and 1970s.
Peterson was born in Bradford, Pennsylvania on February 10, 1924, and attended Pratt Institute before volunteering and serving as a paratrooper of the 11th Airborne Division in World War II.
[1] He lived in the Clinton Hill district of Brooklyn, New York with his wife Holly (Simmonds), also a Pratt graduate, where he had sons Chris (John Christopher), Matthew James, and Joel David Barnes, and a daughter Elizabeth Holly.
He had ten grandchildren, nine of whom were his son John Christopher's with his wife Susan Ferwerda (married 1973); William Lawrence (b.