If you're keen on learning MySQL with perl, you could do worse than to check out MySQL, author Paul DuBois, published by New Riders.

I've got the book, and use it as a reference nearly every day. I've found it invaluable in teaching me the MySQL basics as well as serving as a reference for those functions / operations I don't use very often.

It's got a chapter on the APIs for C, PHP, and Perl. Great book. Did I mention I like it? ;)