Cliffhanger (Biscuit Barrel, 2)

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Tracy Beaker, and Elsie in Queenie, end up being taken into children's homes because they had been left at home alone by their mothers (although in Elsie's case, she's able to go and live with her grandmother.)

Nadine does this to Ellie quite a lot in the Girls series, a standout example being when Ellie points out how stupid it is to trust a guy online and he could be having creepy fantasies about her in a bikini, Nadine retorts that Ellie's just jealous because she's too fat for anybody to imagine her in a bikini - even worse when you consider Ellie struggled with Bulimia in Girls Under Pressure. Distracted from Death: In Diamond, Ellen Jane misses her mother's death in childbirth because her father (whom Ellen Jane was supposed to bring home from the pub) forced her to stay and show off her gymnastic skills for his friends. In the Girls series, Ellie has a crush on a handsome guy who turns out to be gay, leading to embarrassment for her when she pretends to her friends that he is her boyfriend Dan (the real Dan being awkward and nerdy.) She and the gay guy do become good friends though.Not Blood Siblings - Jem and Hetty in Hetty Feather were foster siblings, although Jem ends up marrying someone else. Big Sister Instinct: Jude tries to protect her youngest sister, Dixie. She endlessly argues with Rochelle, though.

Downer Ending - Not unheard of, particularly in My Sister Jodie, even if the birth of May adds a note of hope. Another book not immune to this was Lily Alone: whilst the books ends with Lily claiming that "we're all going to be together, very, very soon", just how accurate her statement is is left extremely ambiguous. Especially given the fact that Kate, Lily and her siblings mother is arrested for both child neglect and credit card fraud, so social services might not trust her to be a parent. Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane - The Power of the Shade and The Other Side, where it's left open to the reader whether May and Alison really have supernatural powers (although the latter book more strongly implies that Alison uses fantasies of astral projection as a coping mechanism.)

Hetty Feather does this twice: looking for her mother in Hetty Feather, and her father in Emerald Star. She finds both.