At the February 9, 2012, meeting of our user group, GGMUG, I gave a presentation on Beginning jQuery and jQuery UI. I had a great time and really appreciate all the folks who turned out to hear me rattling on.
My slides are posted here at the GGMUG site.
Here are some links to help get going with the jQuery stack.
jQuery.com (obvious) From here you can get to the other bits of the stack: jQueryUI, jQuery Pluggins and jQuery Mobile.
Pluralsight has 3 jQuery related video courses as of this writing.
TekPub also has screencast training for jQuery.
The TekPub class is conducted in part by Dave Ward. Dave lives in the Atlanta area and is a real expert. You can follow his blog at Encosia.com. I highly recommend you check it out.
As for books I would recommend:
Those aren't the only books, but the ones I have read and recommend.Hope this helps!