According to staff at two leading Dublin bookshops, children's books have been disappearing off the shelves . . . without troubling the tills.

The problem was so bad in Dubray Books on Grafton Street that staff were forced to move the children's books to a part of the shop visible from the till point. In another shop, which asked not to be named, a staff member confirmed that children's books are frequently stolen.

"Darren Shan, Artemis Fowl, Harry Potter . . . all those young boys' titles are really popular. If you check the stock lists and find there's just one left, then you know the chances are it won't be there when you go looking for it."

"They dare each other to take certain books, " said Martin Black, manager of Eason's.

"Sometimes you see kids and you know they've been put under pressure by other kids who stay outside the shop."

However, both Dubray and Eason's confirmed that the most popular books among the shoplifting intelligentsia are Irish crime titles, with "anything by Paul Williams" topping the best stealers' lists.

Eason's also stocks academic texts and Black reports that they too occasionally vanish. "You'd get the odd academic work disappearing.

Expensive law books in particular go missing."

But the shoplifting of books is not as prevalent now, say most booksellers, as it used to be.

"It was a problem 10 years ago where books would be stolen to order, " said Black, "and they'd end up in markets or being sold in pubs. But with increased CCTV and security, it's not as big a problem now as it once was."