Different Like Coco | 
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| Creator: Elizabeth Matthews
Publisher: Candlewick
Category: Book
List Price: $16.99
Buy New: $9.71
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Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 126158
Media: Hardcover
Reading Level: Ages 4-8
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 40
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 10.7 x 9.2 x 0.4
ISBN: 0763625485
Dewey Decimal Number: 746.92092
EAN: 9780763625481
ASIN: 0763625485
Publication Date: February 13, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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Product Description
This picture-book biography of Coco Chanel, now an international fashion and culture icon, shows just how far a person can come with a little spunk and a lot of determination. Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel was always different. And she vowed to prove that being different was an advantage! Poor, skinny, and orphaned, Coco stubbornly believed that she was as good as the wealthier girls of Paris. Tapping into her creativity and her sewing skills, she began making clothes that suited her (and her pocketbook) - and soon a new generation of independent working women craved her sleek, comfortable, and practical designs.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Different. Yep, different. Different! Okay, we get it already. May 30, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Elizabeth Matthews, Different Like Coco (Candlewick Press, 2007)
Different Like Coco is a perfect book to illustrate one of the dead horses I am constantly beating, though I didn't realize it when I first put the book on the to-be-read list. The point? That message books are, with exceptions so few they don't matter in the greater scheme of things, infinitely inferior to books written with no overarching message in mind. Matthews wanted to make sure she got the point across that Coco Chanel excelled because she was different. Which is certainly a valid point to make, but mentioning that she was different and then just getting on with the story-- especially in a children's book, with so little room for text-- would probably have been a better approach. Instead, we get told she was different. And then told again. And again. Really, didn't the book's title get the point across well enough? Not for Matthews, I guess. What could have been an interesting and engaging biography comes off as heavy-handed and unsure of itself. **
 A terrible role model May 6, 2008
4 out of 12 found this review helpful
Coco Chanel was a heroin addict, vicious anti-semite, and Nazi "collaboratrice". She slept with men she didn't love to set herself up in the dress making business where she made a tidy sum peddling overpriced frocks to wealthy women. It mattered not a whit to her that there was a depression followed by the German occupation. If you want to write a biography of a French woman why not pick someone who actually contributed something of value to the world such as Heloise-- the medieval abbess with very advanced ideas, Eleanor of Aquitaine--the French born queen of England who ruled in her son's stead, or one of the thousands of "resistantes" who risked all to combat the Nazi occupiers.
Negative body image alert! October 29, 2007
6 out of 18 found this review helpful
What an insidious little work this is! While trying to convince the reading public (mostly young girls, I suspect) that Coco was "unique" and "beautiful", all sorts of negative body image messages are foisted on the reader. Note, for example, five pages from the end, which reads:
"Women no longer wanted just to dress like Coco - they wanted to be just like Coco. Her distinctive beauty lay in an attitude, something that even the richest of socialites couldn't buy."
This is written next to a drawing of Coco, looking chic and svelte; standing next to her is a large woman wearing the same outfit and hairdo as Coco, looking decidedly grotesque and frumpy. The underlying message? Beauty standards are decidedly narrow - and thin.
But the best part of the book - the message I think our daughters need to hear loud and clear - is the cutesy little drawing of the young Coco on the back cover. What is she doing? Stuffing her bra.
So much for the woman who banned the corset, only to add toilet paper to her bustline. Again, what a fine message to share with the youth.
This book should be consigned to the flames. I am sure that a book could be made to tell an endearing story for young people about fashion and about Coco - without promoting such negative body images and stereotypes.
Unfortunately, this book is not it.
 REVELING IN CORSET-LESS CHIC May 7, 2007
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
As Maurice Chevalier sang, "Thank Heaven for little girls" . . . at least we can thank Heaven for one who grew up with an independent spirit, and an imagination for corset-Less chic. Coco Chanel (1883-1971) said "In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different." The book's end papers reproduce other quotations from this fashion icon, including "Fashion is made to become unfashionable!"
Elizabeth Matthews has written a perfect Springtime fancy, and the pen & ink illustrations are every bit as lively, just right for introducing children & their very willing parents to a story about the little girl Coco who overcame her tough childhood with sewing skills learned in a Catholic orphanage. She could hold her own with snobby students of privilege and learned much by watching her peers. She later hung fabric on mannequin forms and basted in her relaxed styles which brought her fashion immortality.
The author, who graduated from the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, chose Chanel as her somewhat innovative subject for children's picture books. Matthews is sure to have studied much about Coco Chanel and her clever "inventions" of the cartigan suit, and in 1926 "the little black dress." Reviewer mcHaiku isn't quite as old as the famed Chanel No. 5; it contained more than 80 ingredients, a new fact about 'parfum' for this reader. Chanel epitomizes a certain fortitude & determination that we hope young readers will try to replicate.
Perhaps they will remember another of her sayings: "INNOVATION! One cannot be forever innovating. I want to create CLASSICS."
Applause! Applause! March 23, 2007
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Children's non-fiction books have come a long way, not just in style but in subject matter. How great that Candlewick saw fit to publish a picture book biography of, astonishingly, someone the average child is probably unfamiliar with -- a woman who died long before the child was born, from a country not much studied in grade schools, representing a profession hardly mentioned at all: fashion designer. But Elizabeth Matthews, through text and pictures, has made Coco Chanel someone little girls (and open-minded little boys?) can identify with. Chanel's story is a literal rags-to-riches tale, and Matthews' enchanting art work captures her heroine's style and joie de vivre (not to mention chutzpah, to mix linguistic tags) beautifully. The cover image itself could be posted on a little girl's bedroom wall. And underneath, perhaps, the words "Dare to be Different. Like Coco."
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