After more than 30,000 hours of play testing with a variety of toys, kids enlisted by FamilyFun magazine rated Playmobil's Knights' Empire Castle — a construction toy with trapdoors, a dungeon and rock dropper — the best, for which it was recognized at FamilyFun's Toy of the Year Awards last week. Of 520 toys reviewed, other top picks were Zocker Toys' 3D Pool Table, Fisher-Price's Shake 'N Go! Speedway, Tiger Electronics' ChatNow cell-phone-style walkie-talkies, and Spin Master's Slurpee Drink Maker.

— Associated Press

BARNES & NOBLE OPENING

Stop by the Barnes & Noble store at Ala Moana Center, opening today for business 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily in a portion of the old JC Penney store. There are about 200,000 book, music, DVD and magazine titles; a larger-than-usual children's department (15,000 titles), Barnes & Noble Jr.; a Starbucks cafe; and WiFi ($3.95 for two hours). Need to catch up on faraway news? Its newsstand stocks 2,000 publications, from specialty magazines to foreign newspapers.

— Wanda A. Adams

FINAL WORD

"My relationship with my father was the most central relationship of my life from the time I was 0 to 30."

Gwyneth Paltrow | on her father, producer-director Bruce Paltrow, who died in 2002

— Associated Press