Using two case studies, we highlight preservice teachers' (PSTs) perspectival understanding to consider what experiences, or combinations of experiences, children's literature supports PSTs' journeys in building empathy in their teaching. The notion of "perspectival understanding" guided our examination as we unpacked PSTs' responses to opportunities to engage with multiple perspectives that existed in diverse children's literature. Two individual literacy courses served as the foundation for this analysis. The findings of the first case suggest that PSTs shifted their views on the roles of children's literature, gaining an understanding of how multicultural literature could more equitably represent and support diverse students' learning. In the second case, PSTs' participation in book club discussions of chapter books depicting immigrant children's experiences revealed that they were able to engage in perspective-taking to some extent by focusing on protagonists without considering other supporting characters. Productive future inquiries could include assignment-level, course-level, and semester-level study of teacher education programmatic redesign to center empathy, leading to the development of perspectival understanding, toward children from historically marginalized communities.