I Am the Cheese he was confused and depressed, convinced that he was alienating his new young adult audience because of the complex and ambiguous story. However, "I Am the Cheese" proved to be a success. "I Am the Cheese" was named to five annual book lists according to the publisher description of the 20th anniversary edition. It won the 1997 Phoenix Award from the Children's Literature Association as the best English-language children's book that did not win a major award when it was originally published twenty years earlier. It is named for the mythical bird phoenix, which is reborn from its ashes, to
Reborn doll as well. Consultant psychiatrist Raj Persaud explains that mothering a real newborn baby releases the hormone oxytocin in the mother, and hypothesizes that this may explain why "reborn mothers" become emotionally attached to the reborn baby doll. For grieving parents who form emotional bonds with reborn dolls, some child bereavement counselors advise against parents substituting their deceased child with the dolls. Reborn mothers contend that they are not replacing children but remembering them. Psychiatrist Sue Varma, teacher at the NYU school of medicine, says mothering reborn dolls rather than just collecting them can become a problem when it is used