TV's Raymond Gets Book Sense -- Thanks to a Well-Read Set Decorator

Ray Barone, the title character on the CBS hit comedy Everybody Loves Raymond, now in its sixth year, is not really the bookish type. But in the episode airing October 14, Raymond and his long-suffering wife, Debra, attempt to raise his cultural IQ by attending a lecture by the fictive author of Hidden Treasures of the Amazon at Sidewalk Books, an invented Book Sense bookstore on Long Island, New York.

On the set at Sidewalk Books

Sidewalk Books may exist only in a Burbank TV studio, but, thanks to Raymond set decorator Donna Stamps, it includes many authentic details.

Stamps told BTW that her assignment was to create a model of a small, comfortable, "mom-and-pop" bookstore, rather than a "big corporate" one. The assignment suited Stamps very well.

A regular patron of Vroman's Books in South Pasadena, her immediate association with bookstores was the Book Sense 76, which she has long used as a guide for her own reading selections. Her investigation quickly brought her to Michael Hoynes, ABA marketing officer, and Jill Perlstein, ABA director of marketing services. "These guys were amazing and so receptive. They sent me everything I needed," she said.

Stamps had a clear vision of Sidewalk Books, and it featured much Book Sense signage, including shelf-talkers. "I told Jill that I wanted the little pieces of cardboard that hang off the shelf. Now I know the right name for them," she said.

Stamps painstakingly created a space with the atmosphere of a real bookstore -- frontlist and backlist sections, an overstuffed leather chair in which "you could kick your shoes off and read," Christmas lights, and lots of objects on display. She also contacted such publishers as Chronicle Books, Antioch, and Perseus for books and sideline items.

"Book Sense will be very visible -- in the opening shot of the bookstore, there is a Book Sense counter card on the table. The whole process was great fun and a lot of work," she said. The one discouraging thing? "We built an entire bookstore with so much detail and no one even buys one book," Stamps lamented. -- Nomi Schwartz