question for you:
have you any programing experience before?

check this out:
https://area.autodesk.com/index.php/t...utorials_list/
you have to be signed up to see the tutorials, but check out Conversational MEL part 1-3

i don't think it's complete, but it didn't worry me, because it only talked about real basic stuff that appears everywhere in every language

i skipped through this pretty fast and picked it all up, but that's because i already have a few languages under my belt (see my sig :p)
so, i'm not sure how a new comer to programing will go

also, check out the help files that come with Maya,
the tutorials there have stuff about scripting

can't say i've had much of a chance to play with MEL for animations, so i can't really point you out to any of my findings