Stick length is a somewhat controversial subject, the sort of conventional wisdom is that a stick for ice hockey should come up to somewhere between your nose and chin in bare feet, but theres a large group of people (including many NHL forwards) who use significantly shorter sticks, more like at your adams apple in shoes/shoulder height in skates. This:
a) Encourages proper knee bend/"athletic stance" when playing, while an overly long stick will encourage you to stand up straight, your knees should always be bent whenever you have the puck (whether skating hard, dekeing, shooting, etc.)
b) Allows you to really get your weight over the puck for maximum power in your shots, with a real long stick you're just sort of chopping at a puck that's far away from your body and that takes away from your power
c) Most importantly, it lets you stick handle properly, when stick handling your top hand should be somewhat in front of your body to allow a full range of motion, like this:
Not sort of trapped on your hip, limiting your range of motion, so you can't move your hand across your body, which is how you'll see a lot of lower level players stick handling. This is a pretty good article on stick length written by a former NHL player/coach/broadcaster (Howie Meeker):
http://www.cuthockeysticks.com/
There are of course defensive defensemen who will use real long sticks, but it hurts your stick handling and your shooting, and if you're just learning the sport it's something that will impede your progress IMO. I'd say start off with a stick cut to just below your mouth in shoes, make sure you're getting a good knee bend when playing/practicing, and if you feel like you could go shorter with your stick cut off about 1/2" at a time, not ever going too much shorter than your adams apple in shoes/shoulders on skates.
As for what kind of stick to use, I say start off with a cheap wood stick, this way if you end up cutting it too short or breaking it or whatever it's not a big deal, later you can upgrade to a composite. A Sherwood 5030 with a Coffey curve is probably a good place to start, it's a good (if somewhat easy to break) wood stick with a pretty standard mid curve. You will not get much benefit out of a composite stick at all until you're quite experienced, may as well just get a wood stick for cheap so you can play around with stick length, see if you like a mid curve, not be too choked if you break it taking slap shots with poor form, etc.
One last thing, use Renfrew tape for your stick, I've tried other tapes and Renfrew is by far the best. A nice thick, sturdy tape, not like 3M tape that is all thin and sticky and just not very good.
