Jimi & Me by Jaime Adoff

Keith's beloved father is killed in a robbery and the 13-year-old's world falls apart.  Without the life insurance they expected, his music producer father's death leaves Keith and his mom destitute.  Moving from a nice apartment in New York to his aunt's small Ohio town where a biracial kid does not find easy acceptance.  There he challenges his new school by dressing like Jimi Hendrix, the musical hero shared with his father.   When his mom discovers the reason his dad left them with nothing, Keith vows to meet the secret son his father seems to have cherished more than him. 

The Last Invisible Boy by Evan Kuhlman

Middle school student, Finn Garrett, feels he's gradually becoming invisible after his father's sudden death. Readers share what's going on through his daily logs--described by Booklist as a cross between, "Jeff Kinney's Wimpy Kid series and Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." Sad, funny, engaging.

Do You Know the Monkey Man? by Dori Hillestad Butler

Samantha is obsessed with finding her dad. He left when she was three, the same year her twin sister drowned on an outing with him. Her mom is remarrying and doesn't like to discuss either Sam's father or her twin. Frustrated by all the secrets, she goes to a psychic. What the psychic tells her is so shocking that she is driven to find out the truth. What Samantha learns on her search changes her life forever.

Pieces of Georgia by Jen Bryant

Thirteen-year-old Georgia McCoy finds out that she's been labeled as "at risk" in her permanent school record. Then the school counselor gives her a notebook and tells her to write to her mother. Her mother has been dead six years. Still, Georgia starts the journal. Readers follow her entries as she converses with her dead mother about poverty, her father, her loneliness, and signs that her mother's artistic gifts are showing up in her. When somebody anonymously pays her membership fee to an art museum, she begins to understand who she is...as well as the person her father is. A feel-good story told in free verse--full of love, friendship, and hope.