Beholding Bee

I liked this well enough, or rather, I liked Bee. I loved the settings, the time period, and many of the characters. The problem I'm having here is that there is WAY too much going on and nothing gets explored. We have two kids (basically) raising themselves in a carnival during the second world war. In addition, Bee has a large birthmark on her cheek. There is enough there to explore the story and watch Bee grow. But no, we need to add on a pig trainer with a past, two ghost women in a house (and WHAT are the odds that Bee would randomly walk into THAT town on that street and then be led to that house?), a family dealing with polio and a MIA father in the war, school yard bullies, women's rights, the rights of the special needs children, etc. Gees. It has so many morals (all of which are told to me and not shown-except for standing up for yourself) that I feel like I have been beat over the head with the lecture stick.
The shame here was that the writing was charming, the characters interesting, and the settings were awesome. Where was the editor on this one?
I don't think this one would be a great book club read because there is way too much going on here, but for historical fiction fans it has the right “feel” to it-as long as the reader doesn't mind not spending too much time on any one thing. I happen to love this time period and enjoyed that aspect very much.
Overall, not a bad book, but not a great one either. Certain aspects in the book reminded me very much of other books: Charlotte's Web (the pig, I guess), Heidi (ironically), The Graveyard Book, Because of Winn Dixie and a few others from my childhood.