A close encounter with Ringo Starr; the family dog that ate 500 peanut butter cups; a stranger who saved the life of a beloved crab.

Such tales have one thing in common: They sprang from P.S. 150’s Heritage Storytelling Project.

In two seven-hour workshops, professional storyteller Bill Gordh worked with parents and kids to explore and refine their family tales, to be shared one evening last month at the school. Book designer Barbara Grzeslo helped the families create illustrations to go with their stories.

Thirty families participated and many told stories that brought the kids closer to their elders: A conniving great-great-great-grandfather who “liberated” barrels of a prince’s wine for a wedding; a great-grandmother, the foster mother of many children, who won over a city inspector with a bowl of soup; the ancestor who caught butterflies for a king.

Many of the stories in the workshops emerged through the artful coaxing of Gordh, who first told stories of his own. “The families would say, ‘I don’t have any stories’ and then so many stories they have in them would start to come out,” said parent Mitchell Cohn, who helped organize the program with Amanda Guest.

Cohn called the school program “exceptional” because, for a change, it centered on parents, not kids. “The children get a fun piece of information from their parents,” he said, “something that they might never have learned.”