SOLVED. Juvenile Fantasy. Boy goes on a quest with characters from his toybox to find a dragon's mother. [s]

[Robert]

A boy acquires a model of a dragon. I think that it was coiled round the feet of a statue of a girl (possibly Chinese because the dragons were modelled on Chinese or Japanese mythology rather than Germanic). The girl and the dragon come to life and explain that they were imprisoned as a statue by some sort of magician. The girl and the dragon want to return to their life/family/whatever. The boy gathers his toys, which are alive, and they sail on a quest to do whatever needs doing. The toys are led by a tin soldier, who develops a romantic interest in the girl (all totally innocent, it's a kid's book). It was written in such a way as to imply that he kept having these adventures and that there might have been other books of them, but I never saw any so it may just have been a narrative conceit to "give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative."

The cover of the copy I read had a golden dragon emerging from a cave on a beach and a smaller dragon rushing to meet it.

Read in the early 1980s.

[Genesistrine]

Beyond the Midnight Mountains by Frank Charles?

[Robert]

That's the one!

Thank you.