About Alice and Alan
Authors of The Sea Knows
Alan B. Havis came to happiness the hard way having gone through a variety of troubles and tribulations from work, family, and health.
These tribulations enabled Alan to see beyond them, and rather than let them define him, he CHOSE to minimize them and squeeze out the positive that can be found even in the worst circumstances. Alan learned that happiness is really a choice.
With happiness in mind, Alan has transitioned his life to be more fulfilling and has opened himself up to the infinite possibilities for happiness that all of us have on a daily basis. One transition has been to write children’s books, and he has co-authored The Sea Knows with Alice, coming out in May, 2020 with Simon and Schuster.
The Zen of The Steam Room
by Alan B. Havis
Some people walk into a steam room, sit on the lowest benches where it’s coolest, and quickly get uncomfortable and walk out. Others go into the steam room and sit low, and you can tell they’re stressed but maintaining. Yet others walk in and go right to the top benches where it’s hottest, seeming to embrace as much heat as there is.
How could that be? It’s all the same heat.
The answer is that it’s not the heat that counts, but our response to it. We can fight the heat or we can embrace it. And the heat in the steam room is no different than the heat we may feel in many aspects of our lives. We have financial heat, job heat, family heat, health heat, and more. Ultimately, it’s all just heat. What defines us is not the heat but how we deal with it. Choose happiness.
Alice B. McGinty feels lucky to be someone whose default state is happiness. To her, there are many forms of happiness – quiet happy, laugh-out-loud happy, spin and dance happy, explore-the-world happy.
She loves them all, but most often her happiness is quiet, and just a bit spunky – like stepping out into the snow to get a good view of a sunset, finding the wonder in a shiny pebble, and looking in awe at the ocean. She’s a kid at heart, and writing books for kids lets her explore and share her sense of wonder about the beauty and mysteries of the world. Driven by curiosity and discovery, she explores people’s lives by writing biographies, she travels to experience other cultures and the wonders of the natural world, and she writes to be part of the joy of language and the power of story.
This has led to books on topics ranging from the recently released The Girl Who Named Pluto: The Story of Venetia Burney (2019, Schwartz and Wade Books, illustrated by Elizabeth Haidle) to The Sea Knows, which she co-authored with Alan. See the story behind the story here. You can find a list of all of her books here, and because she loves sharing her enthusiasm for reading, writing, exploration, language, and creativity with students of all ages, her presentations can be found here.