Imagination and play are often relegated to specific times of the school day (e.g., recess) or pushed entirely into after school hours (e.g., extracurriculars), carefully separated from subject area instruction. How often has it been said that "playtime is over "or that "it's time to buckle down and get serious" when it comes to literacy teaching and learning? In this issue of "Voices in the Middle"--the third dedicated to exploring the world-building commitments explored in their book, "Civics for the World to Come: Committing to Democracy in Every Classroom" (2023)--the authors suggest that it is well past time to dismantle the binaries between reality and dreaming, present and future, and fun and serious when it comes to building equitable civic futures. This article includes an extended excerpt that opens Chapter 6 of their book to illuminate the crucial role that dreaming plays in building the infrastructure of new worlds.