Beholding Bee by Kimberly Fusco

Not a great cover,  Bee has curly hair, not straight.

 

Bee is an orphan who lives with a traveling show in the US during WWII.  She helps to run a hotdog stand with a older teenage girl, Pauline, who is kind to her.  Bee has a diamond shaped birthmark on her face, that she constantly tries to hide with her hair. When the cruel show manager decides to split Bee and Pauline up, and threatens to make Bee and her birthmark part of the freak show, Bee runs away.  In her flight she is guided by a kindly old lady in a floppy hat who leads her to an old Victorian house in the country.  There she meets another old lady and the three of them set up a comfortable living situation.  The only problem is that Bee soon realizes she is the only one who can see the two old ladies. 

When I had finished this book and the other book, A Dark Inheritance, I realized I had been reading two ghost stories at once. But what different stories they are. The one is spooky and suspenseful, while the other was nostalgic and sweet. This book isn't really about ghosts.  It is about learning to accept your flaws and see yourself as valuable and capable. It is also about how having people be kind to you makes all the difference in how you see yourself.  Having the ghostly aunts was just kind of an odd side story. (329p)