While that's true, that bit of the Camel refers to require Module;, not require "FileName";. In the first case, Perl will resolve a module name to a file path. In the second case, Perl will treat the string as a file path and attempt to resolve it accordingly. (I don't have the source in front of me, so I'll wave my hands over some DWIMmery — there may be a Perl_looks_like_plain_module_name() macro in play there.

To solve the original poster's problem, either solution one or two will work:

# solution 1
use lib '/path/to/bar/parent/directory';
use Bar;

# solution 1b
use lib '/path/to/bar/parent/directory';
BEGIN
{
    require Bar;
    Bar->import();
}

# solution 2
BEGIN
{
    require "/path/to/bar/parent/directory/Bar.pm";
    Bar->import();
}
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