Toni Morrison’s next project is very intriguing. USA Today reports that her next book, Remember: The Journey to Story Integration, is framed around early black-and-white photos of school integration, with Morrison writing the hypothetical dialogue and emotions of the children. The book has 52 photographs, and marks the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.

The Independent reports that Michael Moore knew that Disney wasn’t going to distribute Fahrenheit 9/11 a year ago. Here’s the CNN interview in question. The full quote is this:

Almost a year ago after we’d started making the film, the chairman of Disney, Michael Eisner, told my agent that he was upset that Miramax had made the film — Disney owns Miramax — and he will not distribute this film.

Miramax said don’t worry about that, keep making the film, we’ll keep funding it. The Disney money kept flowing to us for the last year. We finished the film last week, and we take it to the Cannes film festival next week.

On Monday of this week we got final word from Disney that they will not distribute the film. They told my agent they did not want to upset the Bush family, particularly Gov. Bush of Florida because Disney was up for a number of tax incentives, abatements … whatever. The risk of losing this — we’re talking about tens of millions of dollars — they didn’t want to risk it over a little documentary.

So the big question here is whether this is a trumped up publicity stunt or a legitimate case of Moore defiantly raging against the machine. Granted, the semantics don’t help Moore’s case. But in light of the deflating Disney image, part of me wonders if this was a ploy by Miramax to stir up a Pixar-like shakeup.

As if Nerve weren’t cool enough already, Neal Pollack now has a column there called “Bad Sex.” Huge bonus points for getting “priapically” in there as a deplorable Tom Swifty.

James Patterson, author of Kiss the Girls and other novels that have sold quicker than airplane parts during the Blitz, intends to write a children’s book. Patterson, known for fulminating at book critics, hopes to demonstrate with “SantaKid” that there’s a kinder, gentler James Patterson behind all the fury. Return of the Reluctant has obtained an early excerpt of his story. We leave readers to decide if there are, in fact, two James Pattersons co-existing in this universe.

Beautiful pearly teeth filled her mouth. She was ready. Really ready. Everything was good, really damn good, about this smile.

Kimberly the Elf was a North Pole trainee. It was her first day.

“It’s a good smile,” Rufus the Elf whispered. “I wouldn’t change a single thing about it.”

They had come to the toy factory to work and to smile. They had three hundred gifts to wrap and send out. Three hundred gifts, and if they were feeling really good, maybe they’d have three hundred and one.

Rufus the Elf had to smile. He had already smiled twice that morning, and he knew he would smile again.

“Tough business,” Kimberly admitted. “But we’ll make it through.”

“Just keep smiling,” he said to her. “It’s the right thing to do.”

Kimberly had imagined this moment, this tremendous new life, so many times. It became easier to smile as the toys poured out the chute like coins flying from a Vegas jackpot. God, she loved smiling and wrapping toys.

Rufus looked at Kimberly. Kimberly looked at Rufus.

There was work to do, and it was good work. As good as the smiles they rode in on.