I highly recommend 'Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python' http://inventwithpython.com http://inventwithpython.com and How to Think Like a Computer Scienti

I highly recommend 'Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python' http://inventwithpython.com http://inventwithpython.com and How to Think Like a Computer Scientist http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/thinkCSpy/ http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/thinkCSpy/ Both are great books that walk you through the basics up, without talking down to you. I assume that the kid is on Windows. Using a UNIX-like system (Linux, BSD) is definitely a good way to understand computers better, especially because of the large amount of programming libraries available often by simply running one command. It's not required of course, but it might help him/her. Yet again, it might not. :-) Once they've learned the dynamics of Python (or other) setting up a GitHub account might not be a bad idea.