Try the "Leasure Arts Knitting Book". I'm probably the wrong person to ask about this, since I'm an auditory learner, but it does explain things clearly, and there are plenty of nice, big, pictures. A friend reccomends "Knitting for Dummies". But the Leisure Arts book is fairly reasonable.
If the people who make Valium and Prozac ever find out about knitting, they'll have it banned.