I've found the foam book to be really useful, John Kennedy's books, although for lots of different types of puppets, have some interesting and unusual ideas, that's Puppet Mania and Puppet Planet, you can usually get them off ebay cheaper than the shops. To be honest with you, search the forums here there are so many great ideas and patterns and anything to do with puppet building. Patterns if you want to use them are good and VIP puppets is reasonable as is the glorified sock puppet at puppet planet, you've got the punto patterns as well, but have a look here first, definitely well worth it.