Beginners Programming Languages

So, Chaz says he wants to learn to program. I figure Python is the way to go, but... maybe I'm wrong.  These two look like they might be interesting.

http://www.alice.org/
http://scratch.mit.edu/

Clearly if he's going to do python, I need to get a better book for him. Recommendations follow:

http://learnpythonthehardway.org/
http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/html/