The canonical way from the Cookbook is simply:

BEGIN {
 unless (eval "require MyModule") {
  warn "Eeek! no MyModule: $@";
 }
}
BEGIN {
 unless (eval "use MyModule") {
  warn "Eeek! no MyModule: $@";
 }
}
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--
$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)