More than just hours of fun, these exciting experiments provide a solid grounding in PIC microcontrollers and the skills needed to program them - from the ground up. Each experiment builds on those before it, so you develop a hands-on, practical understanding of microcontroller programming. You don't need any knowledge of programming to get started. But by the end, you'll be able to complete your own awesome projects!
This book seems to be a good general resource, however because it is so completely chock full of errors and typos, it's probably not the best for noobs.
However, I look forward to learning the things like pulse-width modulation.