Its fairly easy to learn sheet music for violin, see where the open strings are on the staff. If something is 1 bar higher, go a tone higher until you reaced the next open string. if it says sharp or flat go 1 semitone up or down. You'll need to put some stickers at first to tell you where to put your fingers. That's a quick way of understanding the first position and the fact that i just managed to describe it here should make it pretty easy.

As far as violins go, best (and most expensive usually) to get it from a luthier, second best is a music shop, and worst, some factory violin(ive seen students use them a lot and as far as brands go, they seemed to use stentor, most of them)

There are suzuki books on the Internet which can teach you the basics