SPUG: xml parsing

[luis medrano]

List,
I trying to grab the content of xml file is under this tag
<book:isbn>1-56592-243-3</book:isbn> but I tried to do it like this:

my $isbn=$$item{'book:isbn'};

and returns empty but if I do it like this :

my $isbn=$$item{book:isbn};

it gives me this error:

syntax error at books.pl line 64, near "{book:"
syntax error at books.pl line 185, near "}"
Execution of book.pl aborted due to compilation errors.

any idea how I can work around this?

Thanks,
Luis