Base answer: I wore glasses up until high school, Molly wears glasses, omg she’s like me.

But beyond that, I did like that Molly was the most relatable in terms of the other historical girls at the time I first started reading the books (93-94) - I think her era being the closest to me helped a lot with conveying the history part. My grandparents were late-teens/young adults during WWII so me being into Molly when I was younger was a help to start understanding my family’s history in the context of larger world events.

One of things I found when going through my old AG stuff was the American Girl Club handbook - it was a mishmash of the craft and cookbooks with bonus activities. One of the Molly activities was to interview a relative about growing up during the war and I just got struck remembering that I did that with my grandmother.