Re:Scratch and Alice (Score 1)

• Scratch: http://scratch.mit.edu/
• Alice: http://alice.org/
• Storytelling Alice: http://alice.org/kelleher/storytelling/index.html

Yes, these are the ones I dropped in to recommend. Most 12-year-olds aren't going to be delighted by "Hello World" or Fibonacci sequence programs. Scratch and Alice are actually fun ways to start, giving instant, interesting feedback while teaching fundamentals of programming. Incidentally, Alice was written in Python, and one of the people in charge of it was Randy Pausch of "The Last Lecture" fame.