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
Peng (mythology) Peng (mythology) Peng () or Dapeng (大鵬) is a giant bird that transforms from a Kun () giant fish in Chinese mythology. In comparative mythology of giant creatures, Peng is likened to the Roc or Garuda and Kun to the Leviathan. The Chinese logograms for "peng" and "kun" exemplify common radical-phonetic characters. "Peng" (鵬) combines the "bird radical" (鳥) with a "peng" (朋 "friend") phonetic, and "kun" combines the "fish radical" (魚) with a "kun" (昆 "progeny; insect") phonetic. Both the mythic Chinese "Peng" and "Kun" names involve word play. "Peng" () was anciently a variant Chinese character for "feng"