several characters, each taking someone with them when the farmer leaves, yet the cheese has nobody. Adam believes that he is the cheese. He is the bait in a trap. Adam is alone in the world, his mother dead and his father missing, and he lives in a hospital. Another point is that his father had taught him the song, possibly as a way to reinforce the new name, "Farmer," they had adopted. Literary significance and criticism The 1975 novel I Am the Cheese began Cormier's experimentation with first-person, present-tense narration. When Cormier sent the manuscript to the publisher of his previous novel, The Chocolate War, 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. Awards and nominations 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 suggest the book's rise from obscurity. Film adaptation I Am the Cheese was released as a movie in 1983, directed by Robert Jiras and starring Robert MacNaughton, Hope Lange, Don Murray, Lee Richardson, Cynthia Nixon and Robert Wagner. The screenplay was written by David Lange (Hope Lange's brother) and Robert Jiras. Publication history 1977, USA, Pantheon Books, , Pub date ? ? 1977, hardback (First edition) 1977, USA, Laurel-Leaf Library, , Pub date ? ? 1977, ? binding 1977, UK, Victor Gollancz, Ltd, 1977, UK, Fontana Lions 1997, Knopf, 20th anniversary edition, , "with a new introduction by the author 2007, Knopf, 30th anniversary edition (1st Knopf trade paper) "includes Reader's Guide and interview with the author" WorldCat libraries report holding Danish (1986), Catalan (1987), Spanish (1998), Chinese, Polish, Serbian and Korean-language editions. It is also available in Hungarian (1990). References External links I Am the Cheese at SparkNotes (analysis) Robert Cormier at Random House Authors 1977 American novels American crime novels American novels adapted into films American young adult novels Fiction with unreliable narrators Novels by Robert Cormier Novels set in Massachusetts Novels set in Vermont Leominster, Massachusetts Pantheon Books