I grew up in rural Kansas, where there was plenty of time for reading.  My mother (an English teacher) took my sisters and I with great frequency to the library.  My imagination developed rather effusively; I was certain, for instance, that a little man with a poison dart gun lived among our the basement storage, that a very skinny civilization conducted life within the walls of our home, and that a Bengal tiger (somehow) hid itself in the school bathroom.