jQuery offers many different methods Show archive.org snapshot to move a selection through the DOM tree. These are the most important:
  $element.find(selector)
  
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Get the descendants of each element in the current set of matched elements, filtered by a selector. Does not find the current element, even it matches. If you wanted to do that, you need to write $element.find(selector).addBack(selector).
  $element.closest(selector)
  
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Get the first ancestor element that matches the selector. This also finds the current element, if it matches the selector.
  $element.children(selector)
  
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Get the immediate children of each element in the set of matched elements, optionally filtered by a selector.
  $element.parents(selector)
  
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Get the ancestors of each element in the current set of matched elements, optionally filtered by a selector. Despite the name, this looks at all ancestors, not just the immediate parents.
  $element.parent(selector)
  
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Get the immediate parent of each element in the current set of matched elements, optionally filtered by a selector.
  $element.filter(selector_or_function)
  
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Reduce the set of matched elements to those that match the selector or pass the function's test.
jQuery has a select method, but it has nothing to do with navigating the DOM tree. You are probably thinking about 
  Prototype's select method
  
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.
If you would like to transport your jQuery knowledge to the native DOM API, see DOM API for jQuery users.