I would recommend: "Advanced Perl Programming" by S. Srinivasan. A student who doesn't have at least 2-3 quarters of 'C' will find the text challenging. Chapter 20, "Perl Internals" is quite informative as are others.
The OP has posed a very broad question, the general answer to which, just won't fit in a single Monk post. The question just
has to get more specific otherwise at least I am unable to help further.