Ward Jenkins is a very talented illustrator who hails from Portland, Oregon. Recently on his Flickr feed I discover an amazing set of scans he uploaded of the book Space Alphabet (1964) by Irene Zacks, which features some amazing artwork by Peter P. Plasencia. I did a quick bit of searching for a bio of Mr. Plasencia and found this:
"Peter P. Plasencia is a native New Yorker. He is married and has one daughter, Regina. He majored in industrial design at Pratt Institute, studied at the Meschini Institute in Rome, and at the Art Students League in New York. Mr. Plasencia is now head of his own design house. Among the children's books he has illustrated are In The Deep Blue Sea, Magic Mixtures: Alloys and Plastics, and The Chemistry of a Lemon, all published by Prentice-Hall."