People will tell you to look at Merlyns book. Learning Perl. It's good but I think it is more geared to people who have a grasp of programming.

I would suggest taking a look at Simon Cozens book Beginning Perl I have suggested it to complete beginners and they said they liked it.

There is a dummies book but I know nothing about it.

Take a look at our tutorials section too. It has some cool stuff!

Best advice though is to play. Think of something and just do it!