Much of her work as a writer has been inspired by her travels and conversations with people from around the world and their stories (like the Breadwinner where she went to Afghanistan to meet refugees) . She has held many jobs advocating for the
peace movement and the
anti-war movement. She travelled to
Pakistan in 1997 to interview refugees at an
Afghan refugee camp. From these interviews, she wrote
The Breadwinner series, which includes
The Breadwinner (2001), a book about a girl named Parvana; ''Parvana's Journey
(2002), its sequel; Mud City'' (2003), about Shauzia, Parvana's best friend; and
My Name is Parvana (2011), the fourth book in the series. While
The Breadwinner was inspired by an interview with a mother and a girl who disguised herself as a boy in a refugee camp, the subsequent books in the series were more imaginative explorations of how children would survive. In 1999, her novel
Looking for X was published. It follows a young girl in her day-to-day life in a poor area of
Toronto and it received the
Governor General's Award for English-language children's literature in 2000. One of her best-known works is the 2004 book
The Heaven Shop, which tells of a family of orphans in
Malawi who are struggling with sudden displacement as a result of the
HIV/AIDS epidemic. The novel was written to dispel
myths about HIV/AIDS and celebrate the courage of child sufferers. In 2006, she wrote the best-seller
I Am a Taxi, which tells the story of a Bolivian boy named Diego whose family was accused of smuggling coca paste, which is used to produce cocaine. After an accident causes Diego's family to owe money to the prison in which they are incarcerated, the boy must earn them money. He ends up in the coca "pits" where the leaves of the plant are made into coca paste, and the story follows his adventures from there. The sequel,
Sacred Leaf, is about Diego's time with the Ricardos (a family who helped Diego) and a giant coca-leaf protest. In 2007, with
Eric Walters, Ellis wrote
Bifocal, a novel about racism and terrorists in Canada. In 2008, Ellis published
Lunch with Lenin and Other Stories, a collection of short stories that explores the lives of children who have been affected, directly or indirectly, by drugs. The stories are set against backdrops as diverse as the remote north of Canada, the
Red Square in
Moscow, and an opium farm in Afghanistan. In 2014, she published
Moon at Nine, a YA novel based on the true story of two teenage girls who were arrested and thrown in prison in Iran, a country where homosexuality is punishable by death. The fifth book in Ellis's Breadwinner series,
One More Mountain, was published by Groundwood books in 2022. It takes up Parvana's story as the Americans are leaving Afghanistan and the Taliban are regaining control in Kabul. ==Honour==