Question: ```
<li><a href="home.html"> Home </a> </li>
<li> <a href="contact.html">Contact </a></li>

$('li').mouseenter( function() { 
    $(this).attr('a').css("color", "red");   
});

```

fails. I am trying to understand how to reach that a within that 'li'. (not any 'li a')

Answer: 
You can use `children` or `find` for this

```
$('li').mouseenter( function() { 
    $(this).children('a').css("color", "red");   
});

```

**Note:** `Children` only looks at the immediate children of the node, while `find` traverses the entire DOM below the node, so children should be faster given equivalent implementations. find uses native browser methods, however, while children uses JavaScript interpreted in the browser. In my experiments there isn't much performance difference in typical cases.

Copied from [What is fastest children() or find() in jQuery?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/648004/what-is-fastest-children-or-find-in-jquery)
You can do this way too:

```
$('li').mouseenter( function() { 
   $('a', this).css("color", "red");   
});

```