Reddit reviews Learning Blender: A Hands-On Guide to Creating 3D Animated Characters

I bought this book and reference it from time to time, he goes over a lot of the tools and blender interface and then goes into a step by step process of building,texturing.rigging, and animating his character, I think if you register the book you have access to the online portion of his book/his materials. I think its like blender 2.6 something he uses.

heres a video preview

http://www.blendtuts.com/learning_blender

http://www.amazon.ca/Learning-Blender-Hands-On-Creating-Characters/dp/0133886174