Well, it "worked" for both of you, as we say in Grandpa Roger's business.

Raven, you never took your eyes off the screen--not even when it looked like E.T. was dying and you had to scoot over next to me because you were afraid.

Emil, you had to go sit on your dad's knee a couple of times, but you never stopped watching, either. No trips to the bathroom or looking for lost toys: You were watching that movie with all of your attention.

The early scenes show a spaceship landing, and they suggest that a little creature has been left behind. The ship escapes quickly after men in pickup trucks come looking for it. Their headlights and flashlights make visible beams through the foggy night, and you remembered the same effect during the ride at Universal. And the keys hanging from their belts jangle on the soundtrack. It's how a lost little extraterrestrial would experience it.

Then there are shots of a suburban house, sort of like the one you live in, with a wide driveway and a big backyard. A little boy named Elliott (Henry Thomas) is in the yard when he thinks he sees or hears something. We already know that it's E.T.

The camera watches Elliott moving around. And Raven, that's when you asked me, "Is this E.T.'s vision?" And I said, yes, we were seeing everything now from E.T.'s point of view. And I thought you'd asked a very good question, because most kids your age wouldn't have noticed that the camera had a point of view--that we were seeing everything from low to the ground, as a short little creature would view it, and experiencing what he (or she) would see after wandering out of the woods on a strange planet.

While we were watching, I realized how right you were to ask that question. The whole movie is based on what moviemakers call "point of view." Almost every single important shot is seen either as E.T. would see it, or as Elliott would see it. And things are understood as they would understand them. There aren't any crucial moments where the camera pulls back and seems to be a grownup. We're usually looking at things through a child's eye--or an alien's.

When Elliott and E.T. see each other for the first time, they both jump back in fright and surprise, and let out yelps. We see each of them from the other's point of view. When the camera stands back to show a whole scene, it avoids showing it through adult eyes. There's a moment, for example, when Elliott's mom (Dee Wallace Stone) is moving around doing some housework, and never realizes that E.T. is scurrying around the room just out of her line of sight. The camera stays back away from her. We don't see her looking this way and that, because it's not about which way she's looking.