it sometimes happes to me to meet some bright person who is interested in learning a programming language; what usually happens, after a brief talk, is that I lend them my Camel book and ask them to read the tutorial in the first 30 pages or so.

Non programming people usually cannot get a hold of the thing

I think you're giving them the wrong book. The camel book is a book for seasoned programmers, not for people who eventually might be interested in learning programming. Don't get me wrong, it's an excellent book, just not for this audience. It just is not speaking their language.

Now, there are many books out there teraching Perl to a non-programming audience. One of those, for example Elements of Programming with Perl, would make a much better choice for a introductory book.