NOT that long ago a colleague told me that I looked like an adult version of Emily the Strange; something to do with my tendency to wear black I hope and not a reference to my possibly looking like a cartoon character.

For a minute I was a little confused as to who she was referring to, then I remembered seeing T-shirts, backpacks and notebooks emblazoned with a cartoon image of a girl in a black dress, severe bangs and an angry expression. Perhaps my colleague was referring to my angry expression rather than my penchant for black.

Only days later, ironically, Emily the Strange: The Lost Days turned up on my desk, complete with cartoon-gothic cats and the girl's angry stare on the front of it.

According to the font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, Emily the Strange is a creation of artist, Nathan Carrico. Carrico created Emily for Rob Reger, a skateboarder and founding member, along with race car driver Matt Reed, of Cosmic Debris, a clothing line.

The character apparently first appeared on a sticker that was given away at concerts, music stores and skate shops as a marketing tool. All this happened in 1991.

But... there's a bit of controversy to the arrival of Emily.

In 1978 a kid's book called Nate the Great and the Lost List included a very similar picture of a character called Rosamond. She had long black hair and a bunch of black cats as friends, and a number of other similarities.

When the people behind Rosamond, Marjorie Sharmat and Marc Simont, started to chase people who were doing business with Cosmic Debris, the owners of Emily the Strange sued them. Sharmat and Simont promptly sued back.

After a bit of too-ing and fro-ing, saying that Emily and Rosamond were 'in the tradition of similar characters' like Wednesday Adams, the two groups agreed to settle and stop suing each other.

Since then, nothing has been heard from Rosamond and Emily the Strange has gone from strength to strength. Emily the Strange is a franchise and there are at least four international stand-alone stores selling her distinctive merchandise – clothing, accessories, stationary and books.

Starting out as graphic novellas in 2001, there have been four books and four comics and now there's even a monthly, standard length series which has been published since March 2008. The Lost Days is the first in a series of four young adult novels that are being published by HarperCollins.

Presumably the idea is for Emily to 'grow up' with her fans – who were tweens or younger when she arrived, and are now in their late 20s – and so we get an Emily who is still a 'kid' but surrounded by older characters who may or may not be more mature.

Whatever the plan, The Lost Days is definitively an Emily the Strange book. There are plenty of drawings, quirky characters, bits of magic and science, mysteries and not-very-nice people, who aren't exactly 'badies' but more simply an oppositional force.

However, the reason I so enjoyed The Lost Days – and I did – was that Emily is perfectly capable of coping with everything that is thrown her way, including a nasty case of amnesia, rampant property speculation and mother nature.

She is the perfect role model for young girls – she's smart, feisty, capable, practical, caring, active and independent. She also doesn't care that much about fashion considering she really only has one dress.

Emily is, perhaps, a little odd (I really didn't want to use 'strange') but she allows all the other odd little girls – and not-so-little girls – out there to accept themselves as being just as interesting and important as those who are more mainstream.

While that may sound a little pop-psychology, it is particularly valid in this day and age when one reads reports of girls as young as 10 wanting plastic surgery or starving themselves to death to look like their favourite pop star.

As for the quality of the literature, The Lost Days is better than you'd expect. Written in first-person in a series of dairy entries sprinkled with drawings, maps and letters, the structure works well. Particularly if you have a reluctant reader or someone moving up to books from manga.

The plot is meaty enough to keep an adult entertained with twists, clues and mysteries, and the language is actually quite clever.

So, all hail Emily the Strange. Although she began as a marketing tool, her counter-culture heritage shines through just enough to make her an important part of popular culture and well-worth a read.

Emily the Strange, The Lost Days by Rob Reger and Jessica Gruner, illustrations by Rob Reger and Buzz Parker is published by HarperCollins Children's Books and is available at good book stores and online.