John Reynolds Gardiner (December 6, 1944 – March 4, 2006) was an American writer best known for writing the book Stone Fox.

Born in Los Angeles, California, he was a rebellious boy whose teachers believed he would never get anywhere in life.

He was an engineer before working on his first and best-known children's book, Stone Fox, which, at the time of his death in 2006, had sold four million copies.

He lived in West Germany, El Salvador, Mexico, Italy, Ireland, and Idaho where he heard a local legend that inspired Stone Fox.

He took a special class on screenplay and wrote Stone Fox as a movie, but a producer told him to publish it into a novel.