The camel book was “programming Perl” and was more geared towards existing programmers IIRC… there was also the llama book, “learning Perl”, which was maybe what GP was referring to?

Learning Perl (the llama book) was my first programming book, and it taught me programming in general, not just Perl, and I still think it was an amazing book. Very approachable, helpful to beginners, I read it cover to cover. There’s also “learning Perl objects references and modules”, which is a bit of a sequel to Learning Perl. Those two books helped me land my first gig as a Perl programmer, and started my whole career.