Say it with me: Awwwwww!

Fans of the franchise might bemoan the loss of Kirby’s trademark ability, but the imaginative design of Kirby’s Epic Yarn makes
this one flat-out adorable Wii platformer. Players unravel their foes, stretch and pull the landscape, and collect hidden treasures throughout a huge patchwork map.

While the game’s story is clearly designed for kids, some of the levels may prove a little challenging. For this you have co-op mode,
allowing mom or dad to jump in anytime.

Part LittleBigPlanet, part Scribblenauts, all Nintendo, Kirby’s Epic Yarn is great for young gamers and skeptical older fans alike.

These compelling, lasting images are created by the White House photographers, an elite group of nine who are celebrated in the book The President’s Photographer. While the press is kept at arms length from the president, it is the photographer who brings him to the public.

In The President’s Photographer we see touching images of President Obama and his daughters, Betty Ford with her hair in rollers, and President H.W. Bush in bed with his family.

A direct companion to the National Geographic television special of the same title, the book also takes us into the life of the photographer as he follows President Obama around the world in a week. Combined with the beautiful pictures are stories and anecdotes from the five living veteran photographers about the photographs that reveal more than a speech ever could.

A handy reference guide to the another’s habits and qualities that, when discovered, transform the “date you hope to go home with” into the “date you hope chokes on his breadsticks”. Dating faux pas include usual suspects like “bad kisser” and “you live with your parents” but also some lesser-known turn-offs like what’s in your Netflix queue and devil sticks.

From renowned French developer Peter Molyneux, Fable III situates players in the role of a prince or princess staging a coup d’etat against their tyrant brother. Fans of previous Fable games as well as for other roleplaying games or Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series are sure to enjoy the diverse gameplay and witty, whimsical writing.

Mature themes should keep this title away from young players, but the game is perfect for older teens and adults. Online co-op will make you want a copy yourself. Playful and absorbing, Fable III will keep your giftee engaged for many a wintry night.

Everybody is rejected at some point or another and when it happens to you it sucks. But as Other People’s Rejection Letters proves, when it happens to someone else, it’s often pretty funny, in that Schadenfreude kind of way. The book is a compilation of real rejection letters, emails, notes and even post-its rejecting everything from job applications, to paternity, to even love. There is a combination of letters to average joes as well as to future celebrities like Andy Warhol, Jimi Hendrix and Gertrude Stein.

So yes, rejection is awful, but if seeing a letter to Andy Warhol, rejecting his contribution to the Modern Museum of Art doesn’t make you feel a little better about your failed artistic attempts, than I don’t know what will.