John Peterson is an American author of children's books, well known by anyone who is just starting to read chapter books. He is best known for writing The Littles, although many of us also read The Secret Hide-Out and How to Write Codes and Send Secret Messages while growing up.
John Lawrence Peterson was born on February 10, 1924 in Bradford, Pennsylvania. In 1942 he left to attend the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he studied illustration. Midway through his education, he volunteered for the army (this was during WWII), and ended up as a paratrooper for three years
After the war, he went back to the Pratt Institute, and graduated in 1948. For the next twenty years he worked in New York as a freelance illustrator doing work in advertising, magazines, and textbooks. In 1962 he began to write children's books - and it is for this that he has earned himself this node. Peterson's first book, written with his wife, Holly Peterson, was Tony's Treasure Hunt, later renamed Terry's Treasure Hunt. He has since published twenty-five more books, many of them belong to his popular The Littles series.
John Peterson died in 2002.
Somewhere in here he had four children, whom have since provided him with a steady stream of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He is currently living in Hankins, New York.
His Books:
The Littles are by far his most popular series. They have been made in to a Saturday morning
cartoon show (
The Littles), and two full-length
animated movies,
Here Come The Littles , and
Liberty and the Littles . There have also been nine Littles books written by other authors. Mr. Peterson also wrote a series of begining reading books based on the littles, call the
Littles First Readers.