FAMED YOUNGSTER: One of Orange County’s youngest...

FAMED YOUNGSTER: One of Orange County’s youngest newsmakers--6-year-old Jimmy Peters of Huntington Beach--has gone national. . . . The learning disabled youngster, whose dad has sued school officials over his educational program, was featured recently in a Wall Street Journal editorial critical of how much money has been spent in his case. CBS’s Connie Chung has also inquired. “Jimmy is just a happy kid,” shrugs father Jim Peters. “Jimmy doesn’t know that he’s in the Wall Street Journal; Jimmy doesn’t see the TV.”

GOD’S FACES: Plans for a Religious Diversity Faire are underway on the grounds of the county’s oldest church. The Nov. 5 event at the San Juan Capistrano Mission is to start with a Jewish Sabbath service, followed by a Muslim service at noon. . . . Participants will also include representatives of Roman Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist and Bahai faiths, says mission administrator Gerald J. Miller. “The idea is to promote understanding.”

BIG FISH: Tracy Melton of Los Alamitos caught one for the record books recently: a 1,083-pound Blue Marlin off Madeira, Portugal . . . What makes the fish noteworthy, though, isn’t its size as much as the fact that Melton, 26, caught it and reeled it in while standing up. “It’s the biggest fish ever weighed in that was caught that way,” says Mike Leech, president of the Florida-based International Game Fish Assn. Says Melton of the four-hour tug-of-war: “My legs were killing me, but I never thought of giving up.”

JOIN THE BANNED: Cal State Fullerton’s student bookstore is celebrating the freedom to read by joining an unusual national event sponsored by the American Library Assn.: Banned Book Week. Continuing through Friday, the store is offering discounts on displayed texts of books that were once the target of protest or censure . . . Among the so-called offenders: the Bible, “Catcher in the Rye,” “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” and “Where’s Waldo?”