Okay, my copy of this one hasn’t arrived yet, so I haven’t actually read it, but some things just look too cute and joyful and wonderful not to give all the spotlight action possible. Cheer Up! Love and Pompoms is one of those books, a graphic novel with a cis f/trans f romance between two cheerleaders whose friendship is reignited and transformed when they join the same squad. I mean, it kind of can’t be bad? And that’s good enough for me!
Annie is a smart, antisocial lesbian starting her senior year of high school who’s under pressure to join the cheerleader squad to make friends and round out her college applications. Her former friend BeeBee is a people-pleaser—a trans girl who must keep her parents happy with her grades and social life to keep their support of her transition. Through the rigors of squad training and amped up social pressures (not to mention micro aggressions and other queer youth problems), the two girls rekindle a friendship they thought they’d lost and discover there may be other, sweeter feelings springing up between them.
