Depends on your budget and what the kids want. Agreed, the ipod is the "it" MP3 player, granted it's the more expensive one too. I've had about 5 or 6 different ones over the years and the iPod (for me) is the best one because of simplicity of syncing w/ your music library and buying new songs.
My next recommendation would be a Creative Labs MUVO. It's small and it's EASY to load songs. Bare bones though, and memory is much smaller. I saw one for 256MB and an FM tuner on Cambridge Soundworks website on Black Friday for $20. That's done but they have others. The Rio Carbon is well liked, but that company is now gone.
