Leaping lizards! Harry Potter beat Shakespeare!

"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" by J. K. Rowling edged out a full-cast audio collection by the Bard to win best in show at the annual audiobook award ceremony held earlier this month in Chicago.

Read by the multitalented Jim Dale, Potter and his chums competed for an Audie against "The Complete Arkangel Shakespeare" as well as "David Sedaris Live at Carnegie Hall," "The John Cheever Collection" and "A Patriot's Handbook," a collection of archival recordings of great Americans.

Each of the five finalists also competed for awards in one of 25 other categories, ranging from best mystery to best package design.

In the short-story category, Cheever's superb collection, read by the late author and actors such as Blythe Danner, Peter Gallagher and Meryl Streep, lost to Garrison Keillor's "Home on the Prairie."

In the multivoiced performance category, "A Patriot's Handbook," edited by Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and featuring recordings by American legends such as Neil Armstrong, Robert Frost and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, lost out to "Ghost Riders" by Sharyn McCrumb, performed by Dick Hill and Susie Breck.

However, "The Complete Arkangel Shakespeare" did win in the audio drama category, thanks to performances by nearly 400 Shakespearean actors, including Joseph Fiennes and the late Sir John Gielgud.

And Sedaris' hilarious Carnegie Hall monologue won an Audie in the humor category, beating offerings by comic heavyweights Steve Martin, Dave Barry and Ellen DeGeneres.

"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" did beat the competition in its category: best children's titles for children 8 and older.

However, Dale, a finalist for best solo narration by a man, lost to Will Patton, who won for "Last Car to Elysian Fields."

This is the first time in the nine-year history of the awards that the Audio Publishers Association selected Audiobook of the Year.

A team of 100 judges selected the winners after reviewing 525 audiobooks released from Nov. 1, 2002, to Oct. 31, 2003.

The only other nationally recognized award for spoken-word entertainment is given at the Grammys. That lone statue went to funnyman Al Franken for his satirical "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right."

Yet Franken failed to win an Audie in the category for which he was a finalist -- best narration by the author. That award went to National Public Radio's Anne Garrels for her Iraq War memoirs, "Naked in Baghdad."

And the other major winners are:

Fiction, abridged, "Brick Lane" by Monica Ali, read by Elizabeth Sastre (HighBridge Audio); fiction, unabridged, "All Over Creation" by Ruth Ozeki, read by Anna Fields (Blackstone Audio); mystery, "Lost Light" by Michael Connelly, read by Len Cariou (Time Warner Audio and Hyperion Audio); classic fiction, "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck, read by Richard Poe (Recorded Books); science fiction; "Monstrous Regiment" by Terry Pratchett, read by Stephen Briggs (Harper Audio)

Nonfiction, abridged, "The Opposite of Fate" by Amy Tan, read by the author (Brilliance Audio); nonfiction, unabridged, "Charlie Wilson's War" by George Crile, read by Christopher Lane (Blackstone Audio); personal development-motivational, "The Ultimate Weight Solution: The 7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom" by Phil McGraw, read by the author (Simon & Schuster Audio);

Biography-memoir, "The Nazi Officer's Wife"' by Edith Hahn Beer with Susan Dworkin, read by Barbara Rosenblat (Jewish Contemporary Classics); business information-educational, "Use What You've Got & Other Business Lessons I Learned From My Mom" by Barbara Corcoran and Bruce Littlefield, read by Corcoran (Listen & Live Audio).